Panda Dome Complete review: The antivirus for feature seekers

Price When Reviewed

Panda Dome Complete : 1 gadget: $64.49 I 3 units: $71.99 I 5 units: $78.74 I 10 units: $121.49

Best Prices Today – Panda Dome Complete

When you consider antivirus, you don’t are inclined to suppose an excessive amount of about its look. Typically, your concern is that the AV works and isn’t too onerous to determine to out. With Panda Dome Complete, nonetheless, you’ll be able to’t assist however take into consideration its appears to be like.

Similar to Microsoft’s Bing homepage, Panda Dome options a phenomenal background picture, with the interface parts positioned on prime of it. It’s an fascinating various to the standard flat, bold-color AV interfaces. It may take some getting used to, however the picture doesn’t obscure any of the essential elements of the UI.

That’s good, as a result of Panda Dome Complete is chock-full of options, all of which get their very own tile on the first interface. 

You’d suppose a ton of options would include the next worth, and that was the case. More lately, nonetheless, Panda Dome has come down in price. Newcomers can cowl from one gadget at $64.49 all the best way as much as 10 units at $121.49; with the candy spot being $78.74 for 5 units. Regular costs vary from $85.99 for one gadget as much as $161.99 for 10 units. Those costs aren’t unhealthy and about what you’d discover elsewhere. There’s additionally a month-to-month possibility when you don’t wish to commit, in addition to long term two- and three-year subscriptions for many who wish to make the most of the first-time pricing.

Note: This overview is a part of our best antivirus roundup. Go there for particulars about competing merchandise and the way we examined them.

Panda Dome Complete: Features

Earlier variations of Panda, resembling Panda Gold Protection, tried to cram a number of options right into a tiled interface with a number of pages. In Panda Dome Complete, the entire predominant options are listed in a single scrolling record of iOS app-like icons. If a function is energetic there’s an “ON” badge within the upper-right nook of its icon.

The first icon within the dashboard is Scan. Click that and a smaller window opens up with three choices: Critical areas, Full scan, and Custom scan. The final two choices are self-explanatory, whereas Critical areas scans reminiscence, operating processes, browser cookies, and different information for malware. It’s good, straightforward, and simple.

Going again to the first interface, the Antivirus icon is the place you’ll be able to see details about your newest scan, quarantined information, and scheduled scans. 

Panda has additionally added an replace supervisor that searches for updates to your apps and Windows itself. Plenty of different suites embrace a function like this, however we’re not solely satisfied it’s vital as most updates to Windows and apps are automated anyway. 

Next up is PC cleanup, which oddly will get a spot of prominence in Panda Dome. This is a standard “extra” that top-level safety suites supply, with instruments like a disk defragmenter, onerous drive cleaner, and a startup apps supervisor. All of those options are both in-built to Windows 10 or you will get them totally free with a third-party utility, however if you need them multi functional spot, Panda supplies that.

Panda Dome Complete features a VPN that provides 150 megabytes of bandwidth per day and 24 totally different nation areas.

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The suite additionally gives a ransomware monitor referred to as Data Shield that’s not enabled by default. There’s not a lot to this: Turn it on, observe the wizard to allow it, and away you go. If you wish to add particular folders that Data Shield doesn’t embrace mechanically, you are able to do so by launching Data Shield from the principle menu, after which clicking the settings cog within the upper-right nook of the display screen.

Another notable function is Wi-Fi Protection. As we’ve seen with many good dwelling monitoring options from the likes of Eset and Bullguard, Panda’s Wi-Fi Protection allows you to see what’s occurring along with your community. It isn’t fairly as person pleasant as the opposite providers because it simply lists units by IP tackle and producer as a substitute of gadget identify. It might get a bit of extra person pleasant over time because the good dwelling development grows.

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The most fascinating function of Wi-Fi Protection is its near-immediate auditing of the safety degree on your router. My dwelling router popped up as “medium security,” for instance, with a useful guidelines about what was occurring. Panda preferred my degree of authentication and encryption, community identify, and advert hoc community safety.

It advisable that I modify the “connection mode” to one thing safer since mine was automated. It then directed me to click on a hyperlink to get extra info. When I clicked on the hyperlink, nonetheless, Panda directed me to a assist web page with no related info for taking a deeper dive, however there was additionally a “configure router” hyperlink that took me to my router login. After I’d clicked the assistance web page, nonetheless, my router safety went as much as “high.”

It appears to me that most individuals will find yourself with a medium safety score at first, due to their router’s connection mode. Panda’s help page for Wi-Fi Protection even reveals a router with the identical outcomes as mine. It would’ve been useful if Panda simply stated one thing like that proper within the report card, resembling, “This router has medium level security. This is quite common and probably nothing to worry about, but if you are concerned click here to learn more.” Then present some actionable info behind the “learn more” hyperlink.

There are so many options in Panda Dome Complete that I merely can’t cowl all of them right here. Another good one is named Process Monitor. This is a take a look at what’s operating in your PC proper now. At the highest you’ll be able to see what number of processes are being executed, what number of want the web, and if there are any processes that may be a risk.

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Under that could be a record of the latest processes found, with an choice to view a report back to get all the knowledge you can ever need about operating processes. The expanded record reveals which processes are digitally signed, whether or not they’re protected, and what number of HTTP connections they’ve. It’s all very straightforward to learn and perceive, and it’s additionally an effective way to get misplaced in PC nerdom for a short time.

Panda Dome Complete additionally has a USB-drive scanning function that we’ve seen in different safety suites. By default this function will ask if you wish to scan a thumb drive or exterior onerous drive. 

There are a number of different options, together with an software management function to limit which packages will be executed in your PC, a tool location function referred to as Anti-Theft, and parental management.

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Two options that notably stand out are Rescue Kit and the Virtual Keyboard. Rescue Kit is for coping with superior virus issues. It allows you to create a restoration drive as well your PC after which disinfect the PC. This needs to be accomplished forward of time or on a non-infected PC. If that’s not an possibility, there’s the superior virus detector that makes use of Panda Cloud Cleaner—a virus-scanning app that may run on the desktop or off a USB stick—to take a deeper dive into your PC {hardware}.

Virtual Keyboard is a software program keyboard you use along with your mouse. It’s supposed to stop any potential keyloggers put in in your system from siphoning bank card particulars or delicate logins whilst you kind them in.

If that’s not sufficient, every icon has its personal settings the place you’ll be able to tweak varied choices for all of Panda Dome’s options.

Panda Dome Complete: Performance

At this writing, solely AV-Comparatives has checked out Panda in current months. The testing group checked out Panda Free, however sometimes the dearer suites use the identical or related detection engines. 

In AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection test for July via October 2021 the suite blocked 100 p.c of the 743 take a look at instances, with 25 false positives. In the malware protection test for September 2021, Panda blocked 99.93 p.c of greater than 10,000 samples, with 0.03 p.c compromises and 153 false positives. Those are much like the safety scores we’ve seen in recent times with a gentle discount in false positives and compromises.

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For our in-house assessments, Panda truly improved efficiency within the PCMark 10 Extended take a look at in comparison with the take a look at PC with out a third-party antivirus put in. The take a look at rig scored 1,580 earlier than Panda was put in, and 1,637 after set up and a full disk scan. We additionally ran Future Mark’s UL Procyon benchmark that makes use of Microsoft Office. Here Panda dipped from 1,553 with out the antivirus put in to 1,507. For the Handbrake take a look at and the archiving take a look at, there was no change in efficiency with and with out Panda put in.

That’s one thing of a combined bag, however given the Procyon consequence we wouldn’t be shocked if lower-end machines did really feel an influence with Panda Dome Complete put in whereas operating taxing Office information resembling huge spreadsheets.

Panda Dome Complete: Conclusion

Panda Dome Complete gives a ton of options along with the standard malware safety and real-time scanning. Those additional options are virtually an excessive amount of for the common person, even on this simplified person interface. If you’re an influence person, nonetheless, all these bells and whistles will probably be interesting. Based on our assessments, your efficiency needs to be positive besides on some underpowered machines. 

Editor’s observe: Because on-line providers are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this overview is topic to vary in an effort to precisely replicate the present state of the service. Any modifications to textual content or our last overview verdict will probably be famous on the prime of this text.