Avast One review

While it's still the newest offering from Avast, Avast One has been around long enough for users to get a good feel of the program, and third-party test labs to see how consistent it is in stopping malware. In both instances, Avast One has proven it deserves to be one of the best antivirus software.

Some reasons Avast One is worth considering include the number of advanced security tools most of its subscription offerings have. For example, every paid subscription comes with access to a secured VPN, and a helpful system cleanup tool.

There are options to have webcam monitoring and parental controls included, but all Avast One apps feature anti-phishing, ransomware protection, password monitoring, and a simple but effective firewall. You also can protect multiple devices, and Avast One works on all the major platforms, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

You can take the free antivirus app, Avast One Essentials for a spin, though you will be quite limited in the tools you can use, and you can only protect a single Windows computer. But I'm sure once you see how well Avast works, and how easy the program is to use, you'll want to upgrade and take advantage of everything Avast has to offer.

Plans and pricing

For a free program, Avast One Essential has an impressive number of security tools. These include a firewall, system cleaner, and email protections that help keep phishing scams out of your inbox.

Essential has other tools, but they have limits. For example, you can use the password manager to look for any passwords that have been compromised, but this must be run manually. You also have to manually check for software updates and start the process of downloading and installing them yourself.

The secure VPN is available for Essential users, but it's limited to only 5GB each week, with a single server location available. This is enough data for more than a day of continuous music streaming, or 10 hours of watching Netflix.

Avast One Individual and Avast One Family are the same program with the only difference being the number of devices you can protect. For $4.19/mo ($50.28/yr) you can cover 5 devices at once. The Family plan covers 30 devices for $5.79/mo ($69.48/yr.)

This mid-tier subscription doesn't add much more in the way of security tools, but the password manager and software updates are automatic, so you don't need to worry about them. Also, you have unlimited VPN use and can connect to any server in over 50 locations worldwide.

The only tool added to Avast One Premium is identity monitoring. This is actually a good feature to have because it keeps tabs on your personal information notifying you if it is used illegally or sold on the black web, and will help you recover your identity after a breach. Premium protects 30 devices for $119.88 per year.

Compare Avast One subscriptions

Avast One Essential

Avast One's installer isn't as customizable so you don't get to pick and choose the tools you want to download. This makes the process rather simple. However, as with all Avast antivirus solutions, it will try and install the Avast Browser and make it your default. There is a place on the install where you can unclick this option, but you have to look for it because it is in pretty small print.

• Click here to sign up for any of Avast One's antivirus software subscriptions.

After it was installed, I tested Avast One's impact on system performance by running top benchmark PCMark Professional before and after installation. Previously Avast software slowed me down a little more than average, but this time I found no measurable difference at all. Absolutely nothing. 

That's based on Avast One Essentials and without using any of Avast's speedup tools, either. There are too many variables to make any guarantees, but it's at least possible that installing and setting up Avast One could leave your system faster than it was before.

There was more good news in my self-protection tests, where I launched a number of attacks on Avast One to see if malware could disable it. These involve attempting to delete files, change Registry settings, stop or disable services, close processes, unload drivers, and more. None of them made the tiniest difference to the package, which continued to protect me as usual.

Interface

Avast One interface has a light and airy look, with friendly graphics and speedy access to all of One's core features.

Looking to run a scan, connect to the VPN, or accelerate your system, for instance? No need to go browsing through various tabs, then try to remember wherever everything is. Just scroll down and there are shortcuts to scans, the VPN, and others, and you can run them all in a couple of clicks.

Clicking the Explore button displays a full list of Avast One's features, which does look a little more complicated. But it's easier to understand what's on offer when you can see everything in one place, rather than browsing around a number of tabs. And if you don't understand something - what is 'File Shield', exactly? - clicking the option gets you a simple explanation (the File Shield allows Avast to scan every file you access to make sure it's safe.)

Several options aren't available in the free Avast One Essentials (Webcam Protection, Web Hijack Guard, Driver Updater, and more.) Some free apps don't mark these, so you're forever clicking buttons and being told 'Can't have that until you upgrade, you freeloader.' Avast highlights options you can't use with a padlock, a smarter approach that makes One Essential much more comfortable to use.

Overall, Avast One's dashboard looks great, and is easy for beginners to use, but also makes it simple to discover and access the suite's more advanced features.

Antivirus

Avast One's antivirus features begin with the Smart Scan. Launch this with a click and it runs a 10-15 second Quick Scan for malware, combined with checks for dubious browser add-ons and PC performance issues. (It doesn't look for missing software patches, unlike the previous Avast Antivirus, although you can still do this manually.)

The Smart Scan and Avast's real-time protection should spot most threats, but the package has plenty of other options. There's a Deep Scan (previously called a Full Scan) to check your entire system; a Targeted Scan which examines specific files or folders, and a Boot-Time Scan to check for threats before Windows fully starts. And, if that's not enough, you can create custom scan types to do whatever you like.

There are plenty of configuration options, too. You're able to define what to scan (all hard drives, the system drive only, removable drives, archives, and more), how to treat any threats, set scan priority to optimize performance, and more.

On-demand scans

The engine supports running on-demand scans in parallel, a level of flexibility you won't always see elsewhere. If you're running a lengthy full system scan, for instance, you're able to run a separate targeted scan on a removable drive you've just connected, and maybe check some recent downloads, all at the same time.

This didn't always work smoothly. Although My normal on-demand scans ended with a reassuring 'we didn't find anything' message, the Scan History page warned that 'your Explorer Scan was unable to scan all files', and 'we suggest scanning again.'

Could that be a problem? I needed to see which files had been missed to decide. But, no - although I think that's really important information, the Scan History page doesn't make it available.

Scan speeds

Scan speeds were average, with Avast Essentials taking 32 minutes to scan 50GB of executable files. That's fractionally slower than Avira (28 minutes), but well ahead of Bitdefender (39 minutes.)

I scanned the same test data a second time to find out whether an antivirus uses any optimizations. Avast's time dropped fractionally to 27 minutes, similar to Avira's second scan of 24:41. But some apps only scan files if they're new or change, and that makes a huge difference. Bitdefender's second scan of my test data took 27 seconds, and Kaspersky managed 170 seconds.

Avast has little room for antivirus improvements, but on balance, it's a likable product, easy to use, powerful, and configurable, with something for every level of user.

Protection

AV-Comparatives regularly check top antivirus products against the very latest malware. In its latest round of testing, it looked at 16 different antivirus software and how well they stopped malware.

The latest March 2023 summary report places Avast in the top spot with an impressive 99.97% online detection rate. It dipped a little in offline detection and did wrongly tag two files as malicious when they weren't. But compared to the competition, Avast is clearly the program to beat.

AV-Test's Home Windows from February 2023 also places Avast in its top antivirus software group. This lab looked at 18 different antivirus software and rated them in three different areas. Avast was one of 14 that earned a perfect 6/6 for protection. However, it was only one of 6 that earned perfect scores in all three areas.

My own tests began with some simple behavior monitoring checks, where a custom executable uses common scripting tricks to download a malicious file.

Results were mixed, with Avast quarantining the test app immediately for some actions while allowing others to continue and only detecting an issue when the file hit the hard drive. Bitdefender is more consistent, blocking all tests, but others have done much worse (Adaware missed all the suspicious behavior, although it did detect the files), and Avast was acceptable overall.

The second, more advanced test used a simple ransomware simulator I developed myself. As Avast hadn't seen this before, it wouldn't be able to detect it from a file signature alone, making this a useful test of behavior monitoring.

I launched the simulator and Avast One realized this was something new, and announced that it was being scanned for threats. A positive start? Maybe, but around 15 seconds later Avast told me the simulator was safe, then did nothing at all as it encrypted thousands of user files.

Some antivirus apps perform much better on this test. Bitdefender and Kaspersky not only killed the simulator within a fraction of a second, but they also recovered the handful of files it managed to encrypt (five to ten.)

My simulator isn't real malware, though, so while I treat successful detections as a plus, I don't significantly penalize apps that fail to detect it.

What's more, this isn't Avast's only ransomware defense. There's another more effective layer available.

Ransomware Shield

Install Avast One and it automatically detects folders with user documents, then adds them to Avast's Ransomware Shield Protect list. Untrusted apps aren't allowed to modify the contents of anything in these folders without permission.

Sounds good, and sure enough, Avast correctly added the main user folders to its Protected list. It wasn't so smart at detecting others, though, missing folders containing thousands of documents.

That's a problem, especially as there's no sign of any issue. Avast One doesn't tell you it's running this document search, and unless you happen to click the Ransomware Shield option, choose 'View protected folders' and browse the list, you might never realize Avast has missed something.

If you happen to find the option, though, it's easy enough to understand. I spotted the problem and added my extra data folders manually in just a few seconds.

Shield fully activated; I ran my ransomware simulator again. This time Avast One raised an alert as soon as it accessed a file, I chose the Block option, and it wasn't able to touch anything on my system.

Once I did, Avast raised an alert as soon as my ransomware simulator or other untrusted apps attempted to access the files, and they weren't able to do so until I gave permission.

This isn't a substitute for correctly recognizing malware in the first place (my test ransomware wasn't able to encrypt any documents, but Avast didn't recognize it as a serious threat and allowed it to continue running.) Still, it's a useful extra layer of protection that could work with even the very latest threats. Just keep in mind that it's not a paid feature - you can get it for nothing in Avast One Essential.

Blocking malicious sites

Avast One doesn't just do a good job of detecting malware: it detects and blocks access to malicious websites, reducing the chance you'll get infected in the first place.

This isn't an area where Avast has always excelled in the past, but the company looks to have upped its game. Just to make sure, I assembled a collection of box-fresh phishing URLs to run my own tests, comparing Avast One with Bitdefender. That delivered a positive result, with Avast detecting 67% of threats compared to Bitdefender's 41%. 

Avast One doesn't include the Avast browser extensions anymore, which means users miss out on one or two useful web-related extras (there's no highlighting of malicious links in your search results, for instance.) I think that apps messing with my browser setup are generally a bad idea, though, and Avast Online Security can still be installed separately if you need it.

On balance it's a great web protection package, especially as you don't have to buy Avast One Individual to get it: all this web filtering power comes for free in Avast One Essentials.

Network protection

Avast One Essential includes a simple firewall that monitors your network traffic and aims to prevent hackers from penetrating your system and malware from phoning home.

You can also view a list of apps using your connection, the amount of data they've transferred so far, and manually decide to block them.

Upgrading to the paid Avast Individual apparently gets you more shielding of your system and detection and user alerts for port scans and ARP spoofing attacks (an exploit that may allow hackers to infiltrate your network.)

Although this sounds reasonable, I'm not sure how much functionality it adds to the regular Windows firewall. I'm not convinced by all the talk of interaction with the user, either. Norton and Bitdefender's firewalls are still my network favorites, not because they raise alerts and have plenty of tweaks and settings, but because they don't need all that: they do a great job of intelligently managing your network connection all on their own, no manual intervention required.

I noticed that Avast One's Windows app has dropped Wi-Fi Inspector, a handy tool that previously allowed you to view connected devices and highlight vulnerabilities. The Android One Essentials app has a similar Wi-Fi Scanner feature, so the feature hasn't disappeared entirely, but it's a pity it's now Android-only.

Avast SecureLine VPN

Installing the free Avast One Essential gets you a restricted (but still very useable) version of Avast's HideMyAss!-powered SecureLine VPN.

The major restriction is there's no support for choosing a location: the app just automatically connects to your nearest server, wherever it might be. So, you can forget about unblocking streaming platforms in other countries. It's not going to happen.

There's a data limit, too, although that looks relatively generous at 5GB a week. Avira's Phantom VPN gives you a miserly 500MB a month, Bitdefender's VPN offers 200MB a day (6GB a month), and even Windscribe's excellent free plan stops at 10GB a month. Proton VPN's unlimited data plan is still top of the free VPN list, but Avast is way better than most.

Speeds were much more ordinary. My local server managed only 45Mbps, well below average, though enough for browsing and occasional use.

Avast's Windows app has a capable kill switch which correctly blocked my internet access whenever the VPN dropped. I used some very drastic techniques to simulate various problems - turning the router off and on again, crashing the OpenVPN executable - but the app just blocked my internet, displayed an alert, and got me reconnected as soon as possible.

SecureLine can automatically connect whenever you access insecure Wi-Fi. That's handy, but there's a very unusual extra: it can also warn you to connect whenever you visit a banking site, a web store, a 'sensitive' site (adult, gambling, violence, more), or any website login screen. This could save you a lot of trouble if you regularly forget to connect. Bitdefender Premium VPN does something similar with even more site categories and app types (file sharing, P2P), but I've not seen this functionality from anyone else.

Upgrading to Avast One Individual gives you unlimited data and 54 locations to choose from. Download speeds are still below average in my tests, but I've had some unblocking success in previous reviews, including the ability to unblock US Netflix.

The VPN is a great addition to Avast One Essentials, and the 5GB a week data allowance tramples over most of the competition. It's not such a clear picture when comparing paid products, though. Bitdefender's commercial VPN in particular is significantly faster than Avast and did a little better at unblocking in my last round of testing.

Password Protection

Avast One doesn't include a password manager, but you do get a couple of extra protective layers designed to keep your credentials private.

All versions of Avast One have the option to scan a database of data breaches (provided by dark web monitoring experts SpyCloud) to find out if their account details have been exposed.

Avast One's paid products add breach monitoring, where the app automatically checks new breaches and warns you if your credentials are included.

The paid editions also include Browser Protection, a feature that limits access to passwords stored in your browser. I tried using a couple of NirSoft tools to access Chrome and Firefox passwords and Browser Protection worked perfectly, spotting the attempt, and blocking access until I approved it.

These features are genuinely useful, but they don't add a great deal of value to the suite. You can already scan data breaches for your details at Have I Been Pwned, and optionally get a notification if they turn up in a new breach. And the most secure way to handle passwords isn't to control how they're accessed in the browser, but not to store them in the browser in the first place. You're far safer with a quality password manager such as Dashlane.

Software Updater

Avast One Essential's Software Updater scans your apps, detecting and listing missing updates. It'll install them, too, although you must manually click an Update button for every app you'd like patched.

Upgrade to Avast One Individual and you get the ability to automatically update all your apps. I tried this, and Software Updater found six available updates, downloaded the patches in parallel, then silently installed them, all in a very few seconds. 

This looks good and performs reasonably well, especially the free version. Avira's free Software Updater tells you about missing updates but won't do anything to install them until you upgrade.

Avast One only supports updating 50 common apps, though, compared to 150 for Avira, and hundreds for some of the free patch management competition. Still, it's a useful tool and I'm glad to see it included in the suite.

Privacy extras

All Avast One users (free and paid) get access to a Clear Browsing Data feature, where you can quickly clear away your browsing history, cache, cookies, and more. This works much like every other web cleanup tool you've ever used, but Avast does deserve credit for its wide app support: the module cleaned Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Brave, and even Thunderbird on my test system.

Mobile

While testing Avast One I downloaded the program to my Android phone. Part of this review was to see how easy it is to install, set up and use. Overall the process had the same layers of permissions that needed to be given for all the security tools to work, so there wasn't anything unique or surprising for this app.

The antivirus program itself ran great and I found the interface easier to understand and use compared to Norton and McAfee, two programs commonly included with a new phone purchase or cellular contract. But there was a concern that I experienced.

Every time I opened Avast to run scans or check notifications more closely, my phone quickly became really, really hot. Because of this, and the potential damage that level of heat can have on your mobile device, I don't recommend it for this purpose.

Verdict

There's a reason why Avast is considered one of the most popular antivirus software in the world, and why its Essential program is a stellar free app. The number of security tools is impressive for a free offering, and it continues the Avast protection legacy of earning top scores in both malware detection and zxero-day threat blocking.

I don't recommend using Avast One for mobile because of the heat issue, but don't have any qualms about recommending it for Windows or Mac computer protection.

Avast One Personal and Family

Paying for Avast One Individual or family gets you a number of other interesting and unusual features.

The Sensitive Data Shield (SDS) automatically scans your drive for files that might contain sensitive data - names, addresses, passwords, financial details, and more - and prevents other users of your device from accessing them. 

VIPRE's Privacy Shield does something similar, but both tools have the same issue: they're not great at identifying which documents are safe, and which aren't. SDS highlighted some files apparently just because they contained mine and a few other names, for instance, but ignored others containing my bank account details. You can opt to protect files manually, so Sensitive Data Shield is still a feature worth having, but it's not as smart as Avast thinks.

Web Hijack Guard protects browser traffic from DNS hijacking, a nasty exploit where hackers redirect your traffic to malicious websites. I don't have a test to evaluate this, but DNS attacks are a very real danger, and I'm glad to see Avast One is working to keep you safe by including this protection.

Avast's Webcam Protection controls webcam access to reduce the chance of malware accessing your device. By default, this allows trusted apps to access your webcam and blocks everything else until you give permission. But you can also up the protection level to Strict Mode (you're asked for permission whenever anything tries to access the webcam), and there's even an option to disable your webcam entirely.

It's a simple system, with well-chosen default settings, and worked perfectly for me. Avast One spotted my custom webcam hijacker when it tried to grab an image, asked if it had permission, and when I said no, prevented it from accessing my hardware.

Performance boost

Avast One's paid versions round off their feature set with a trio of PC maintenance tools.

Performance Boost lists apps running in the software and can selectively optimize them. This effectively freezes a process, preventing it from using any system resources. Avast restores the process when you open the app again and it should work as normal.

It's a clever idea and can work well. The problem is figuring out where to use it. The point of 'optimizing' an app is you stop it from running any background tasks, but are you really sure it's not doing something important? Syncing files? Checking for updates? Monitoring your system so it can raise notifications? Avast One gave clues for processes it recognized, but there weren't many, and it listed many processes which should really be left alone (the backup tool Backblaze, for instance.)

Driver Updater scans your system for missing driver updates and can download and install any patches in a couple of clicks.

It's easy to use, but also risky. Avast One recommended I update multiple Intel chipset drivers, for instance - a single mistake with any of these could break a PC to the point that it wouldn't boot, maybe even in Safe Mode. Unless your PC is seriously unstable, you're better off leaving the drivers alone.

Avast One does better with its final maintenance tool, Disk Cleaner. As you'll guess from the name, this scans your system for surplus and leftover files, potentially freeing up a significant amount of drive space. 

Disk Cleaner did a reasonable job on my test system, finding 8.4GB of data I could safely delete. That beat Windows' own Disk Cleanup, which managed only 5GB, but the free CCleaner did a little better with 9GB.

Avast One's maintenance tools aren't bad and may help speed up your system. They can't match Avira's System Speedup for features or power, though, and you'll need some knowledge and expertise to get the most out of them.

VPN

All of Avast One's paid subscriptions give you access to the same secured VPN as its Essential offering. However, at this point, you are no longer limited in your usage. With unlimited data, you can connect and use the Avast VPN whenever you want for however long you need to.

What's more, you're not limited to a single server location. Instead, you can access any of Avast's VPN servers in more than 50 locations throughout the world. This gives you added security with more options to generate a new IP address every time you connect.

Verdict

The jump in protection between the free Avast One and the paid subscriptions is impressive and worth the money. In fact, the unlimited VPN access alone is worth the annual cost.

Using the system cleaner and performance boost tools is worth extending the life of your devices, though some tools need to be used with care since tampering with the wrong files or drivers could have the opposite effect.

Avast One Premium

ID monitoring

Both Avast One Essential and Individual have a useful password tool that looks to see if your online identity has been compromised. But Avast One Premium takes this further by including ID monitoring. This service will also keep an eye on the dark web for your personal identifying information, like bank accounts and credit card numbers, full names, birthdates, and social security numbers.

If any personal information is found. Avast will work with you to help contact appropriate agencies, change login credentials, and restore your identity to a pre-attack state. Not many identity theft monitoring services include this part of the deal, so knowing Avast has your back both before and after an ID theft is reassuring.

Verdict

Overall, there are a lot of good antivirus platforms out there, but Avast One is clearly one of the leaders. It's not simply that there are so many useful protection tools in place, but also that these tools are powerful and do exactly what they need to do.

While there are competitors who can beat Avast One in individual areas, what Avast One really succeeds in doing is bundling a strong set of individual tools into a single suite where everything can work well together.

Even better, this is all available in the free version for home use (and it's one of the best free antivirus apps you'll find) with paid upgrades available for those who wish to have more extensive protections in place.

• Here are the featured best cloud antivirus or try out other picks on the best free antivirus list before you go premium.