antivirus Do I need an antivirus or is Win Defender enough these days?

[mancesco]

I've been using Avast Premium Security for years and the experience has always been positive (except for the annoying pop-up ads), but as my current subscription is about to expire I'm left wondering if it is still necessary in this day and age when I keep hearing about how good Windows Defender is. Besides, aren't malware and ransomware the biggest threats these days more so than viruses? Wouldn't be better to invest in a solid firewall and/or malware removal tools (and common sense, of course) instead of relying on these services and the speed with which they update their databases?

 

Avast is offering a pretty awesome discount to renew my subscription, but would that be the right move? Would invest in something like Malwarebytes be a better option instead?

[SolarNova]

The best antivirus is common sense..granted its not so common nowadays but still.

 

[mancesco]

Of course, but everyone makes mistakes every now and then. What if I value having the piece of mind of a good software watching my back?

[Pixelfie]

Usually Defender is enough, third party AV's only use up more system resources while not giving much better security. If you still want a third party one I recommend Malwarebytes or Kaspersky

[aDoomGuy]

Well while Defender offers decent protection I find installing applications and other things slower with it compared to Bitdefender which I use.

 

Here you can see independent testing of anti virus.

www.av-test.org

 

https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10/august-2021/