Avast One review

Avast One is the new name for Avast's overhauled consumer protection suite, which includes antivirus, VPN, privacy, and security features to keep you safe online.

Avast One Essential is a free antivirus software that comes with a slew of functions, including ransomware protection, anti-phishing, and a basic firewall, as well as apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

A limited VPN, easy device speedup tools, and data breach detection to notify you if your online accounts are hacked are among the new features.

When you upgrade to Avast One Individual, you get a robust firewall, complete VPN, anti-tracking, camera monitoring, a powerful disc cleaning, additional device speedup features, and automatic app upgrades. The license allows you to protect up to five devices.

Avast One Family allows you to share all of the benefits of Avast One Individual with up to six family members and 30 devices.

Getting started

The installation for Avast One isn't as configurable as the previous version. Previously, if you didn't require the firewall or the cleanup tools, you could uncheck the box and they wouldn't be installed. It's now all or nothing.

However, this simplifies life, and the setup procedure has improved in other ways. For example, the installer does not attempt to make Avast Secure Browser your default browser.

Avast One Essential does not need registration, thus no accounts or personal information are required.

The end result was a simple and quick installation on our standard review system.

We ran the top benchmark PCMark Professional before and after installing Avast One to see how it affected system performance. Avast had previously slowed us down slightly more than usual, but this time there was no discernible difference. Not a single thing.

That's without utilizing any of Avast's speedup technologies, and it's based on Avast One Essentials. There are just too many factors to offer any assurances, but it's conceivable that installing and configuring Avast One will help your computer run quicker than before.

More excellent news came from our self-protection testing, in which we ran a series of attacks on Avast One to determine if malware could stop it. These included attempting to delete files, modify Registry settings, stop or deactivate services, close processes, unload drivers, and other actions, but none of them had any effect on the package, which continued to protect us as normal.

Interface

Avast One's UI has been completely revamped, which is largely a positive thing. Dark backgrounds, tabs, and tiles are gone, replaced with a light and airy design with welcoming visuals and quick access to all of One's main functions.

Want to conduct a scan, connect to a VPN, or speed up your machine, for example? There's no need to open many tabs and then attempt to remember where everything is. Simply scroll down to see shortcuts to scans, the VPN, and other tools, which you can use with just a few clicks.

When you click the Explore option, a complete list of Avast One's features appears, which appears to be a little more sophisticated. However, seeing everything in one location rather than surfing through many tabs makes it easier to comprehend what's on offer. And if you don't get stuff, what precisely is 'File Shield'? - When you select the choice, you will be given a brief explanation.

Avast One Essentials is free, however it lacks a few features. Some free programmes don't indicate these, so you're constantly clicking buttons and being informed, "You freeloader, you can't have that unless you upgrade." Avast uses a better technique to identify things that can't be used with a padlock, making One Essential considerably more user-friendly.

Overall, Avast One's dashboard is attractive, user-friendly, and makes it easy to discover and utilize the suite's more complex capabilities.

Antivirus

The Smart Scan is the first of Avast One's antiviral functions. With a single click, this software does a 10-15 second Quick Scan for malware, as well as scans for suspicious browser add-ons and PC performance concerns.

Most dangers should be detected by the Smart Scan and Avast's real-time protection, but the package contains plenty of other features. A Deep Scan investigates your whole system; a Targeted Scan examines selected files or directories; and a Boot-Time Scan examines risks before Windows begins. If that isn't enough, you can even construct your own custom scan kinds to perform whatever you want.

There are also other configuration possibilities. You may specify what to scan, how to handle any risks, how to prioritize scans to improve speed, and more.

On demand scans

The engine allows you to execute on-demand scans in parallel, which is a feature you won't find everywhere. You can perform a separate focused scan on a portable device you've just attached, and maybe check some recent downloads, all while running a long full system scan, for example.

This didn't always go as planned. Despite the fact that our typical on-demand scans finished with the encouraging statement "we didn't discover anything," the Scan History page advised that "your Explorer Scan was unable to scan all files" and that "we suggest scanning again."

Is this posing a problem? To make a decision, we needed to figure out which files were missing. But, no, despite the fact that we believe such information is critical, the Scan History page does not include it.

Scan speeds

Avast Essentials took 32 minutes to scan 50GB of executable files, which was average. This is slightly slower than Avira and Kaspersky, but far faster than Bitdefender.

We do a second scan on the same test data to see if an antivirus has made any adjustments. Avast's timing was somewhat faster, at 27 minutes, than Avira's second scan, which took 24:41. Some programmes, on the other hand, only check files if they're new or changed, which makes a big difference. Bitdefender took 27 seconds to scan our test data again, whereas Kaspersky took 170 seconds.

Avast may need some antiviral enhancements, but on the whole, it's a nice software that's simple to use, powerful, and adaptable, with something for everyone.