When you concentrate on antivirus, you don’t have a tendency to consider its look. Typically, your concern is that the AV works and isn’t too onerous to determine to out. With Panda Dome Premium, nonetheless, you may’t assist however take into consideration its appears.
Similar to Microsoft’s Bing homepage, Panda Dome options a phenomenal background photograph, with the interface components positioned on high of it. It’s an attention-grabbing different to the same old flat, primary-color AV interfaces, and would possibly take getting used to. But the picture doesn’t obscure any of the vital components of the UI.
That’s good, as a result of Panda Dome Premium is chock-full of options, all of which get their very own tile on the first interface.
Of course, a ton of options comes with the next worth than most companies. Panda Dome Premium prices $93 per 12 months for a single gadget for brand spanking new subscribers, with an everyday worth of $155 yearly. Panda’s 10-device subscription (a staple providing of AV) is $158 for the primary 12 months, with an everyday worth of $263. That’s far costlier than different massive title suites.
Note: This assessment is a part of our best antivirus roundup. Go there for particulars about competing merchandise and the way we examined them.
Panda Dome Premium’s default view.
Features
Earlier variations of Panda, resembling Panda Gold Protection, tried to cram quite a lot of options right into a tiled interface with a number of pages. In Panda Dome Premium, all the predominant options are listed in a single scrolling record of iOS app-like icons. If a characteristic 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, working processes, browser cookies, and different knowledge for malware. It’s good, simple, and easy.
Going again to the first interface, the Antivirus icon is the place you may 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. Various different suites embrace a characteristic like this, however we’re not totally satisfied it’s crucial 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 typical “extra” that top-level safety suites have, 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 without spending a dime with a third-party utility, however if you’d like them multi functional spot, Panda supplies that.
Panda Dome Premium features a VPN that provides limitless bandwidth and 23 totally different nation places powered by Hotspot Shield.
A premium antivirus suite with a premium worth deserves premium service, and Panda Dome delivers that with reside, 24/7 tech assist that may assist you with every kind of technical points together with printer, router, and smartphone points.
Panda Dome’s Wi-Fi Protection characteristic.
The suite additionally gives a ransomware monitor known as Data Shield that’s not enabled by default. There’s not a lot to this. Turn it on, comply with the wizard to specify the folders that ought to be protected, and away you go.
Another notable characteristic is Wi-Fi Protection. As we’ve seen with many good residence monitoring options from the likes of Eset and Bullguard, Panda’s Wi-Fi Protection allows you to see what’s happening together with your community. It isn’t fairly as person pleasant as the opposite companies because it simply lists units by IP handle and producer as an alternative of gadget title. It could get somewhat extra person pleasant over time because the good residence development grows.
Panda Dome can assess your router’s safety.
The most attention-grabbing characteristic of Wi-Fi Protection is its near-immediate auditing of the safety stage on your router. My residence router popped up as “medium security,” for instance, with a useful guidelines about what was happening. Panda favored my stage of authentication and encryption, community title, and advert hoc community safety.
It really helpful 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.
It appears to me that most individuals will find yourself with a medium safety ranking, due to their router’s connection mode. Panda’s help page for Wi-Fi Protection even exhibits a router with the identical outcomes as mine. It would’ve been useful if Panda simply mentioned 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 Premium that we merely can’t cowl all of them right here. Another good one is known as Process Monitor. This is a take a look at what’s working in your PC proper now. At the highest you may see what number of processes are being executed, what number of want the web, and if there are any processes that could be a risk.
Panda Dome Premium’s Process Monitor.
Under that may be a record of the newest processes found, with an choice to view a report back to get all the knowledge you may ever need about working processes. The expanded record exhibits which processes are digitally signed, whether or not they’re protected, and what number of HTTP connections they’ve. It’s all very simple to learn and perceive, and it’s additionally an effective way to get misplaced in PC nerdom for a short time.
Panda Dome Premium additionally has a USB-drive scanning characteristic that we’ve seen in different safety suites. By default this characteristic 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 characteristic to limit which applications may be executed in your PC, a tool location characteristic known as Anti-Theft, parental management, and a built-in Cloud Drive that permits you to sync information simply as you’ll with Dropbox and OneDrive.
Panda Dome Premium’s Rescue Kit.
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 in addition your PC after which disinfect the PC. This ought to be performed 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 together with your mouse. It’s supposed to forestall any potential keyloggers put in in your system from siphoning bank card particulars or delicate logins whilst you sort them in.
If that’s not sufficient, every icon has its personal settings the place you may tweak numerous choices for all of Panda Dome’s options.
Performance
At this writing, solely AV-Comparatives had checked out Panda in latest months. The testing group checked out Panda Free, however sometimes the costlier suites use the identical or comparable detection engines.
In AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection test for July via October 2020 the suite blocked 100 p.c of the 758 take a look at circumstances, with 33 false positives. That’s loads, however each suite scoring 100 p.c had excessive false positives. Those suites that scored barely decrease, within the vary of 99.7 to 99.8 p.c, usually had decrease false positives.
In the malware protection test for September 2020, Panda blocked 99.89 p.c of greater than 10,000 samples, with 0.11 p.c compromises and 114 false positives. Those are the safety scores we additionally noticed two years in the past. This time round, nonetheless, the false positives have been considerably decrease.
Panda Dome Premium gives a ton of options.
For our in-house assessments, Panda was 20 factors decrease within the PCMark 10 Extended take a look at than the take a look at PC and not using a third-party antivirus put in. The take a look at rig scored 1,658 earlier than Panda was put in, and 1,638 after set up and a full disk scan.
For the Handbrake take a look at and the archiving take a look at, there was no change in efficiency between with and with out Panda put in. Unarchiving took about 15 seconds longer, whereas file transfers have been barely sooner.
That’s fairly a blended bag, however given the PC Mark scores we wouldn’t be stunned if decrease finish machines did really feel an impression with Panda Dome Premium put in.
Conclusion
Panda Dome Premium gives a ton of options along with the same old malware safety and real-time scanning. Those further options are virtually an excessive amount of for the typical person, even on this simplified person interface. If you’re an influence person, nonetheless, all these bells and whistles are doubtless interesting. Based on our assessments, your efficiency ought to be nice.
The solely sticking level with Panda is that it’s costly. You do get loads for that worth, however you may undoubtedly get antivirus safety that’s simply as extremely rated at a greater worth.
Editor’s word: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this assessment is topic to alter as a way to precisely replicate the present state of the service. Any modifications to textual content or our remaining assessment verdict might be famous on the high of this text.