Avira Prime for Mac Review

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While it is convenient that various security and utility suites attempt to integrate more features into their offerings, sometimes some parts work better than others.

Avira Prime, the paid version of Avira’s free antivirus software, Avira Free Security, provides several tools to the user.

Features

Like similar apps on the market (you can learn more about alternatives to Avira Prime in our roundup of the best antivirus software for Mac), Avira Prime is designed around several modules (antivirus scans, protection options, quarantine , VPN, Passwords, Cookie Cleaner, Identity Assistant, Junk Cleaner, Uninstaller and Startup Apps). Each module can be customized and configured as needed. The software installs quite cleanly and asks for permission to fully access the hard drive, which is normal.

Once the virus scan is started, the quick scan can take less than 10 seconds, while a full scan took more than six hours to examine more than 800 gigabytes of files on a one-terabyte SSD. The custom scan feature allows you to drop files and folders for quick scanning as well as scan external volumes as needed. It’s pretty simple to minimize Avira Prime and work with other apps while the scan continues, so it doesn’t entirely occupy your Mac while it goes through your files.

Foundry

Other modules tend to work as advertised. The Cookie Cleaner module does a good job of allowing you to view and clean your cookie data. It helpfully groups cookies into different categories so we can easily remove statistics, tracking and ad-based items without touching login records, and it did this across our various browsers. Junk Cleaner proved surprisingly effective, reclaiming almost 55GB of space when we tried it. There’s also a dedicated uninstall manager to clean up when removing apps and controls to manage those that start automatically.

Identity Assistant offers to comprehensively track your email addresses, phone numbers, credit cards, bank accounts, physical addresses, driver’s licenses, player tags, insurance account numbers and youth name your mother’s daughter to see if any illegal activity surfaces, including this information.

Password Manager is a combination of system and local browser extensions as well as a web management console with its own master password. In the Passwords section of the main window, a button sends the user to a web page, where credentials are managed. This works best with a browser extension and we are happy to confirm that an extension is now available for Safari (the extension was previously only available for Opera, Chrome and Firefox.)

Password manager and junk cleaner are included in both the free and paid versions of Avira. Where Prime differs from the Free Security version is that you get full, unlimited use of the VPN service (provided as a separate app) instead of the 500MB per month limit imposed on non-paying users . The VPN can optionally block content from malicious websites, enhancing the security of the software’s local scanning and monitoring. The module creates a VPN network setup, which allows for additional privacy, but if you already have a dedicated client, this may be a better option.

Usability and performance

As for performance, the Junk Cleaner module does a good job of removing unnecessary junk, downloads and temporary files to help reclaim disk space, the Uninstaller does a good job of locating and removing Applications, and Startup Applications provide tight control over which applications activate when your Mac starts up. Aside from Avira Prime crashing once when Junk Cleaner was running, these work as well as anything offered by competing software suites.

However, there are still some major concerns to be resolved. First of all, the full scan took over six hours on my MacBook Pro 2022 M2. On top of that, the program stopped to confirm that the user had granted access to scan areas such as Documents and Downloads during the initial full scan, something I had never seen before in any application I have worked with. Although things like the scheduler work and allow scans to be scheduled in advance, the fact that Avira Prime’s virus scan located and quarantined several minor worm files but missed suspicious files like as the Wave web browser, which has been implicated in various phishing scams. in recent months, has been worrying.

That said, independent testing labs AV Comparatives and AV Test gave Avira Prime for Mac good scores. As of May 2023, Avira scored 99% for Mac malware protection and 99% for Mac PUA protection with AV Compatitives, while AV Test gave Avira 99.8% in September 2023.

One criticism is that Identity Assistant only shows where your personal information was compromised in large-scale hacks, such as those at Adobe, Dropbox and Tumble, which feels like an upsell. The software quickly emails you information that could have been discovered for free on haveibeenpwned.com. Avira Prime then offers identity monitoring for $38.99 for the first year with an automatic renewal of $64.99 for each additional year until canceled.

Price

Avira Prime is a five-device subscription that can cover your Mac and iPhone and, if necessary, a Windows PC and Android smartphone too. There are no trials or special pricing for the first year, which means no surprises a year into your subscription with inflated renewal costs.

However, while there is no trial of Avira Prime, there is a free version: Avira Free Security for Mac, which we review separately. There is also Avira Internet Security, which is slightly cheaper.

The $9.99/£8.99 per month rate to cover five devices with Avira Prime isn’t great, but when you consider that there is no limit to the number of devices that the free version will cover it, you may want to stick with the free version. option that offers the same basic protection as Prime.

This is really the sticking point with Prime: it’s quite expensive considering that Avira Free Security offers the same basic protection as Prime. You don’t feel like you’re getting what you pay for with Prime.

Verdict

Avira Prime does a good job of detecting and dealing with unwanted software, through manual and automatic scans and activity monitoring. The additional features are well designed; Phantom VPN, cookie cleaning, junk file management, and uninstaller help all add to the package.

If you just want to monitor questionable software activities, Avira Free Security may be all you need. And it’s hard not to think that Avira is doing itself a disservice by offering so much for free: the added benefits of Avira Prime won’t justify the cost of the annual subscription for most people.