Antivirus has always been one of the most controversial programs that we install on our computer. On the one hand, this is the software in charge of keeping us safe from computer attacks and hackers. But, on the other hand, it is one of the programs that slows down our computer the most, especially if we have a mid-range or low-end PC. For this reason, when choosing a good antivirus, it is very important to take the time to find and choose the security software that best suits our needs, the one that slows down our computer the least.
Testing all antivirus by hand to see which one makes our PC go slower or faster is practically impossible. For this there are companies, such as AV Comparatives , who are in charge of analyzing the different security solutions in equal controlled environments to be able to know from their security to the false positives they return or the performance they have. In this way, thanks to the tests of this platform, we will be able to know how these antivirus affect the performance of Windows 10.
Avast, AVG and Malwarebytes make your programs open slow
How do we notice more when the computer is slow? When we open the programs that we are going to use. And precisely, antivirus programs usually have the executables controlled to prevent malware from being loaded onto the PC through them. Most of the decent antivirus have already fixed these problems and allow us to open and close programs without it being noticeable in performance. However, there are very popular antivirus programs that make it take several seconds for the PC to start up each time we open a program.
Avast and AVG have been the antivirus programs that have received the least note in this section. If we use one of these antivirus, the first time we open a program the system may take a good amount of seconds to load it. The following times it will go faster, but not fast enough. G Data is another antivirus that has obtained similar results, as well as the well-known Trend Micro.
And if we have the well-known Malwarebytes anti-malware installed on the computer, we will also have performance problems when opening the programs that we have installed on the computer.
Avira, Windows Defender and Total Defense: the ones that copy files slower
To avoid copying viruses, antiviruses also control the tasks of copying files between folders or between drives. Within this aspect, the ones that have obtained the worst marks, without a doubt, have been Avira , Windows Defender and Total Defense . Both Avira and Total Defense already get a performance improvement if we copy the same files to another directory (as they are on the white list). However, Windows Defender does not finish recovering the speed, being the one with the worst performance within these tests.
Total Defense, Windows Defender and G Data take longer to compress and decompress
Compressed files are usually one of the main sources of malware distribution. When we download a file containing dozens or hundreds of different files, it is easy for there to be a threat among them. And, therefore, antivirus have to pay close attention to these types of files.
As this platform shows us, the ones that analyze compressed files the slowest are Total Defense , Windows Defender (again, Microsoft‘s antivirus) and G Data.
G Data and Vipre, the slowest to download files from the Internet
Finally, these tests let us see how two of the antivirus analyzed, specifically G Data and Vipre , make Internet downloads slower than normal. This is because the antivirus constantly analyzes all the data that reaches the computer to prevent a piece of malware from being copied, and, therefore, uses a certain amount of resources that should be dedicated, for example, to control the browser’s communications .
When it comes to browsing the Internet from the browser, neither slows down the computer.
