Avast One Review: Not So Vast

Value When Reviewed

$29.99 / 5 units I $48.99 / 30 units

Greatest Costs Right this moment: Avast One

Avast is among the massive family names relating to cybersecurity. The corporate has been growing antivirus software program since 1988 and within the late ’90s, Avast software program powered McAfee’s antivirus merchandise, for a short time.

Extra just lately, in 2016, Avast purchased rival antivirus supplier AVG, and in 2017, it acquired widespread PC tune-up device CCleaner. Final September, Avast accomplished a merger with NortonLifeLock, which has turned the 2 antivirus giants right into a safety software program superpower. 

With an extended historical past of innovation behind it and now, a member of a big household, Avast presents subscribers a big selection of services, from antivirus and malware detection instruments, to a VPN.

When you can obtain free of charge and subscribe to many of those individually, Avast gathers all the things collectively beneath Avast One, the corporate’s premium safety suite.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Important, Particular person, Household subscriptions

Avast One subscriptions comprise antivirus software program, privateness safety options, and a few primary clean-up instruments. Supported working techniques embody Home windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. 

The antivirus software program guarantees 24/7 energetic safety to your units, an e mail scanner, and a Wi-Fi community inspector – the identical core providing that Avast presents as a free obtain.

Avast One provides a number of different safety extras like ID safety, ransomware safety, and reside alerts if an unknown system joins your Wi-Fi community.

These options are additionally obtainable with the Avast Premium Safety suite, however this solely works out as being barely cheaper when it comes to price. It’s additionally not as beneficiant when it comes to protection, because the entry-level Premium Safety deal solely covers one system (versus the 5 lined with Avast One Particular person) and the dearer model covers ten units (versus 30 with Avast One Household).  

On prime of that, Avast One comes with plenty of further options which you received’t discover inside Avast Premium Safety.

Amazingly, Avast presents a free model known as One Important. This has an information cap for the VPN (a beneficiant 5GB per week) and protects a single system. Nonetheless, there’s nothing stopping you from putting in it on different units utilizing different e mail addresses…

Options

Avast One contains SecureLine VPN, which makes use of the WireGuard protocol and, when you pay for the Particular person or Household subscription, enables you to connect with over 30 completely different nations with no restrict on how a lot you may browse or stream. So wherever you’re on this planet, you may binge each sequence of Purple Dwarf on BBC iPlayer. Which you need to, when you’ve by no means seen it.

The clean-up instruments seek for junk information, blurry images, and duplicate information which might be taking over space for storing. 

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Desktop apps

Given the entire options on supply right here, Avast One might simply be overwhelming. Luckily, the Home windows and macOS desktop apps are very simple to navigate.  

On the left-hand column are shortcuts which take you to a house dashboard, which provides you an summary of what’s operating. Underneath this can be a branching menu of all of the software program choices at your disposal. 

A message centre (often populated with alerts and suggestions and tips) sits beneath this. On the backside is an account web page, the place you may handle subscription settings, and test for software program updates.

The set-up course of entails operating a Sensible Scan for the primary time. This rapidly searches your system for widespread threats, and takes about 5 minutes. As soon as that preliminary scan is completed you may (supplied no viruses or malware had been detected) go away Avast One to run within the background when you go about your enterprise. 

Some options, resembling Avast Net Protect, will spring into motion once they’re wanted. When you attempt to entry a website flagged as being harmful via your internet browser, you’ll be stopped from doing so by a warning display, which you’ll be able to select to heed or ignore. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Different issues, just like the E-mail Guardian, must be enabled manually. E-mail Guardian works with each webmail and devoted apps together with Outlook or Mail. As soon as arrange this, too, works routinely. Within the Gmail internet app, for instance, Avast will add inexperienced tags to any emails deemed to be ‘secure’ and pink tags to something it thinks is ‘suspicious’. 

There’s additionally a ransomware safety device, which by default sees key folders (Paperwork, Footage, Movies, and Music on Home windows and Paperwork and Footage on macOS) given some further safety. You possibly can select to deliver extra information into the fold, if you want. 

Each the Home windows and macOS variations allow you to run a Deep Scan. This combs your total system for any viruses, and usually takes a bit longer than the Sensible Scan. You possibly can arrange scans to run on your whole units every day, or you may select to run scans manually. 

One thing that’s distinctive to the Home windows model of Avast One is boot-time scans. This searches elements of your system not obtainable throughout common scans, isolating threats earlier than Home windows boots up – Avast recommends that you simply solely do that if there’s an issue. It took slightly below 9 minutes to finish a boot-time scan on my Asus Vivobook Professional 16X OLED.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

The Avast One firewall works in the same method to the built-in Home windows Defender firewall, in you can assign Wi-Fi networks to be both ‘trusted’ or ‘untrusted’. Avast One’s firewall comes with some options you don’t get on the built-in Home windows firewall, particularly the choice to be notified if there are makes an attempt on a community to steal delicate data or scan your laptop computer for open ports. Mac customers don’t get a firewall in any respect, so must stick with their built-in firewall.

A macOS-only Avast One characteristic is the exterior storage scan device, which can lengthen safety sweeps to any onerous drives or USB sticks you might have linked. 

Each the Home windows and macOS apps characteristic a easy ID safety device, which tells you if something related along with your e mail deal with(es) has/have been compromised. As with Norton 360, you don’t get far more element of how extreme any breaches could be, simply which accounts you could must both shut down or change passwords for.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Cellular apps

The iOS and Android apps replicate virtually each characteristic you get from their desktop counterparts.

When you can’t do issues like run boot-time scans, or scan exterior drives, there’s a neat further – the safe picture vault. This allows you to create a non-public picture gallery which you’ll be able to lock with a PIN or fingerprint, though on the adverse aspect, you may’t zoom in on or edit images when you’ve saved them. 

The Android app goes one higher, in that it additionally options an App Lock setting, which you should utilize to put a PIN/fingerprint lock on particular apps, too.

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Efficiency

Avast’s antivirus software program has persistently carried out nicely through the years, and presents excessive ranges of safety in opposition to viruses and malware with minimal affect in your techniques’ efficiency. 

In the newest spherical of testing from AV-Check, Avast One for Home windows scored prime marks in all three classes – safety, efficiency, and useability – as did its macOS counterpart. 

Solely AVG and Bitdefender scored prime marks in each the Home windows and macOS classes, so Avast will be recommended for that.

The Android model additionally scored prime marks for cover and efficiency, however misplaced two factors within the usability class, for falsely flagging apps downloaded from Google Play as safety threats. 

Likewise, SE Labs gave Avast’s antivirus capabilities (in April 2023) an almost-perfect rating, with a single proportion level being taken away in only one class ‘reliable accuracy’ class, once more for a number of false positives. So if something, Avast One is too protecting. 

Luckily, if it tries to cease you from downloading one thing or accessing a web site which you already know to be secure (in different phrases, you’re 100% positive), you may override it, as proven beneath. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

VPN

The built-in SecureLine VPN enables you to entry the web by way of servers primarily based in 36 nations, together with america, Japan, Eire, and Australia. 

The quickest servers, and those most fitted for video streaming and peer-to-peer connections are all recognized by icons, so it’s simple to rapidly discover one thing to fit your functions. There aren’t any knowledge limits, even for streaming. 

You possibly can have the VPN routinely flip itself on if you’re banking on-line, torrenting, or buying, and there’s a kill change, to cease any delicate knowledge leaking ought to the VPN connection fail. 

Whereas the VPN doesn’t hold a log of browser periods, DNS queries, or originating IP addresses, it does acquire some data.  That features timestamps of your VPN connections, and the quantity pf knowledge transmitted throughout your session, which might – probably – be used to determine you. This data is deleted after 35 days, but when privateness is extra necessary to you than something relating to VPN use, search for a VPN that doesn’t acquire any connection logs in any respect. 

Whereas it was doable to look at BBC iPlayer from France, I wasn’t capable of entry US Netflix from the UK, no matter which US server I picked. It’s typically the case with VPNs {that a} streaming service will be capable to detect that you simply’re utilizing a VPN, and try to idiot it, and can stop you from accessing content material. 

Thomas Newton / Foundry

Value & availability 

Avast One is accessible as an Particular person or Household plan, overlaying 5 and 30 units, respectively. By way of options, each tiers are in any other case the identical. 

Costs are discounted for the primary yr.

Value-wise, Avast One competes nicely with McAfee Whole Safety Premium, which prices £39.99 for the primary yr, and £109.99/yr after that. 

They provide related options and ranges of safety, however a key distinction is within the variety of units they’ll defend directly – McAfee Whole Safety Premium enables you to defend as much as ten units. 

One other distinction is that McAfee’s ID safety characteristic is extra superior: it proactively displays e mail addresses, reasonably than simply telling you about previous leaks.

Whereas the primary yr low cost isn’t as beneficiant because the one you at the moment get with Norton 360, long-term, Avast One is kinder to your pockets, and the Household tier’s system protection beats Norton 360 Superior – which solely covers as much as ten units. Once more, although, Norton 360 presents extra options, together with cloud backup and a password supervisor.

One other various is ESET Web Safety, which is at the moment priced at £34.99 / US$49.99 / AU$69.99 per yr for one system, and allows you to add cowl for extra units an additional £5 / US$5 / AU$5.

For extra, see our roundup of the very best antivirus software program.

Verdict 

Boasting prime scores from impartial testing labs and an easy-to-use interface, Avast One presents people and households good safety from malware and doable scams, and a good VPN. 

The issue, nevertheless, is that you simply get just about all of this free of charge when you obtain Avast One Important. Plus, whereas paying removes the info restrict on the VPN and opens up entry to all of the servers, you continue to don’t get a password supervisor, parental controls or different further options.

The ID safety device is ok free of charge nevertheless it’s disappointing that you simply don’t get proactive monitoring if you’re a paying buyer – one thing you do get with McAfee Whole Safety Premium.

The power to safeguard information is sweet, however once more, you get this with the cheaper Avast Premium Safety. The tune-up instruments are all nice-to-haves, however not important, particularly when you will get CCleaner free of charge as nicely.

Avast One is usually superb at what it does and is a genuinely nice choice when you’re after a free safety app. Nevertheless it wants further options if the paid variations are to be beneficial alongside McAfee Whole Safety and Norton 360.