Microsoft has conceded in the past that its anti-malware offerings only provide baseline protection. For Windows 7 and Vista, there’s Microsoft Security Essentials, while Windows 8 and Windows 10 come with the nearly identical Windows Defender.
While more advanced users gravitatetowards third-party antivirus softwares to gain an edge, many consumers will tend to stick with Microsoft's default options. Now, AV-Test Institute has published its latest findings, perhaps lending a bit more confidence to the stock malware protection provided by Windows.
Each vendor's score is a sum of three metrics: Threat protection, Performance (system slowdown, speed) and Usability (ease of use, false positives). Each item can attain a rating of 0 to 6, totaling a maximum of 18 points. A minimum of 10 must be achieved to gain a certification rating.
Several years ago Microsoft did poorly on a regular basis, scoring 9.5 and 11.5 during the Windows 8 era. The results prompted Microsoft to defend its commitment to protecting users in a blog post, citing its own telemetry data as indication of progress.
However, Redmond’s scores have improved in the most recent round of testing: on Windows 8, Microsoft scored 15.5, while for Windows 10 and Windows 7, the total was 14.0 for each. (In the screenshot below, vendors are listed alphabetically; Microsoft is placed at the bottom because their software is considered baseline. Full test results can be viewed and sorted by operating system, performance metric and timeframe.)...
Windows Defender improves, rises above nearly half the competition in new antivirus test
Test antivirus software for Windows 10 - October 2015 | AV-TEST
My McAfee is due to run out soon looking at how well Defender is doing.
Is it worth paying once again for it or now go for Defender.
Would love your feed back on it
I use defender and it serves me well. My browsing habits are very careful so I haven't given it much to do, I think the combo of defender for real time and antimalwarebytes as a manual scan works well. The only thing I don't like about defender is the way it sticks it nose in when I browse folders in explorer (first time after a boot) with lots of exe files in. It always cranks into gear and delays the icon display of the exe. This normally wouldn't be too much of an issue but I have quite a few shortcuts on my desktop for various games (mainly steam) and on boot quite a few of the these shortcuts take a few seconds to draw the icon. It's because defender follows the shortcuts to the executables to do whatever it does. Just looks a bit naff. I sped it up by adding the steam folder as an exclusion for real time protection, steam is a trusted source so I feel comfortable doing it and I know I can use antimalwarebytes to scan it periodically. I could try another anti virus but am not too fussed for now. It's not having a detrimental effect on my daily usage, once booted defender stays pretty quiet and lightweight
cheers, Wayne
I recently abandoned my Avast subscription, mostly due to the reported improvements in Defender and Firewall. Malwarebytes free Anti-Exploit is also running on my machines. No issues on 4 machines over the past two months...
Good news and I'm glad to hear this.
MSE & Malwarebytes free does it 4 me
Does Defender still use a lot of RAM? I went back to AVAST in November 2015 because Defender kept using more RAM as time went by, and storing layer after layer of anti-virus definition files on my P.C., instead of updating just one file each time. In 3 years of use, it never found any virus or malware. Maybe it's a lot better now in these regards?
I use Defender and Malwarebytes.My McAfee is due to run out soon looking at how well Defender is doing.
Is it worth paying once again for it or now go for Defender.
Would love your feed back on it
I also use SUPERAntiSpyware free once a week as an extra scanner.
Make sure you download the free version and Not a trial version.
SUPERAntiSpyware | Remove Malware | Remove Spyware - AntiMalware, AntiSpyware, AntiAdware!
Thank you everyone who has posted
So Defender is good as long as I use an Antimalware.
Which I do
So I know now that when my subscription runs out I will go with Defender
I think you meant "Windows Defender & Malwarebytes free does it 4 me."MSE & Malwarebytes free does it 4 me
There is no MSE in windows 10.
The built-in Windows Defender is the "improved" version of MSE.
That is also why you won't be able to install MSE as you already have it by the name of Windows Defender.
