Kaspersky Antivirus

Kaspersky Antivirus

Kaspersky Antivirus is a bit of a controversial entry. It earns extremely high praise in some quarters, and revulsion in others. For their part, AV Comparatives gave it their product of the year award, which counts for a lot in our book. Kaspersky boasts rapid updates, strong heuristics, and the ability to quickly adapt to new threats without needing entire product updates to keep you protected. It's a fully-featured antivirus tool that offers both on-access and on-demand scanning of files, emails, downloads, and executed applications. Kaspersky promises that their smaller, more regular updates will help protect your PC from known threats, but also keep you safe from OS exploits and holes in software you may not have been able to update or patch yet. The tool also comes with a resource-light "gaming mode," that will let you play in peace, anti-phishing protection, and more. It's a premium product, and starts at $40/yr.

Kaspersky's nominations thread was full of the back-and-forth we mentioned earlier. Some of you praised it for being complete and well-rounded, and taking a proactive approach to internet security. Others noted that it's one of the more heavy products in the roundup and felt bloated and slow on your computer. Unlike many of the other contenders, Kaspersky makes no lofty claims about its resource utilization or lightweight install. However, it does offer complete protection from threats, and depending on what you use your PC for, that may be more important. Read more in its nomination thread here.