My dad has always bought a AV software for my brother, himself and me and he just renewed his Avira Prime for another year. All 5 licenses are used, my desktop (windows) is safe, but I wanted to secure my laptop (MacBook) and phone (iPhone) as well. So I did a little Googling and check Reddit and noticed that this sub does not seem to like Avira. But when I google Avira it seems mostly positive.
So I was I was wondering if Avira prime is really that bad? Or if it is just that the free version sucks because of the advertisements or if it’s a bad product all around?
And I was wondering what to maybe use instead for my apple products. I read bad things about Bitdefender when I google it, but you guys seem to love it.
Thanks in advance! 
Both Avira and BitDefender are reputable companies and are regularly tested by testing agencies. Keep in mind when people give their negative opinions and experiences, they do count for something. But corporations with large baskets of money, resources and research time also use enterprise versions of their AV products. If Avira and BitDefender are trash products, that would not happen.
Avira is so greedyfor money, it’s insane.
Most reliable sources are:
Real-World Protection Test July-August 2023
Malware Protection Test September 2023
MalwareTips reviews by Shadowra.
AVLabPL
ComssRU YTChannel
My favorites:
- Eset lightest, privacy, no false positives, low cpu usage while scanning. Does not require an account. Install and forget.
- Emsisoft and F-Secure good protection, privacy and not so heavy.
- Avast Premium because offer custom and minimal installation without bloatware. Does not require an account
- Bitdefender is heaviest product. Good protection but takes a lot of ram (1gb commit size), high cpu usage while scanning.
- Kaspersky if you don’t care about privacy. Check this link and the source Russian Laws and Regulations: Implications for Kaspersky Labs
Don’t listen fanboys and random youtubers. Read and make an informed decision.
Avira really that bad?
Yes. Just read their Wikipedia page.
EDIT: Not sure why this got downvoted.
EDIT 2: Sorry it’s because I was referring to AVAST not AVIRA. Sorry for the confusion.
I used the free version Avira between 2010 and 2014 on a PC. It was terrible at virus detection. My PC got infected and it even shut down Avira. I used old Hitman Pro and malwarebytes to clean it up.
thank you for the reply, man. I appreciated that. glad to hear both are still solid options. Almost felt bad that my dad bought another year of Avira, but good to hear it’s still a solid product.
Is it safe to use the free version Avira on my Mac?
I have been using Bitdefender for years I have never seen it use close to 1GB of ram. Am I doing something wrong???
thank you for taking the time to give all these suggestions. I’ll check them all, as will I do with the resources. Cheers!
I had a good experience with Kaspersky
Not sure if they improved, but I used Avira between 2010 and 2014. It was junk
EDIT: Not sure why this got downvoted.
Probably because it doesn’t say what’s so terrible about it.
I tried Bitdefender Total Security months ago and ram usage was high. Active Private Working Set 500-600 mb. Commit size/Private Bytes (Task Manager/Process Explorer) up to 1gb. Ofc is not a big deal if you have 16gb ram or more.
I wouldn’t trust a security company that included spyware (very lucrative spyware) in their products and only stopped when it was found out. It’s not as if the CEO got fired or anything.
EDIT: /u/lucs28 pointed out rightly that I’m talking about Avast, not Avira. My mistake.
lol yeah and this JUST came out about their terrible company: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1axkg6y/avast_fined_165_million_for_privacy_software_that/
I have absolutely no hope that they’ll turn things around. The only good thing is they go out of business and create a kind of warning to other companies.
LOL. I’m in search for a good antivirus company, reading your comment give me some doubt in people’s credibility. Avast is not Avira
