The greatest antivirus answer is one which’s so simple as doable. After all, if a person can’t navigate the app to make the most of its options, then a lot of this system’s usefulness is misplaced. Trend Micro’s Maximum Security nails this precept with a few of the best navigation we’ve seen.
Note: This evaluate is a part of our best antivirus roundup. Go there for particulars about competing merchandise and the way we examined them.
The default dashboard may be very simple. There’s a big Scan circle within the center that adjustments coloration based mostly on the standing of the PC. Clicking on the circle initiates a fast scan, whereas clicking the downward-facing arrow to the fitting provides the selection of fast, full, and customized scans.
The major dashboard for Trend Micro Maximum Security.
Above that circle are the 4 primary safety classes for the app: Device, Privacy, Data, and Family.
Device tab
The Device tab contains the settings for Trend Micro’s real-time scanning and internet filtering. There’s additionally a PC Health Checkup possibility to assist optimize system efficiency. If you utilize the function, the app ranks your present optimization degree and allows you to select to “make improvements.” These tweaks vary from fixing safety vulnerabilities to reclaiming disk area.
Next up on this part of the app is Mute Mode, which is a very nice tackle the standard gaming-mode function. By default, Mute Mode prompts when the PC goes into full-screen mode. This will be turned off, nevertheless, when you’d slightly activate it manually.
Maximum Security’s Mute Mode.
When operating, Mute Mode stops “non-critical” notifications from interrupting you; it may possibly additionally disable Windows Update and mechanically terminate applications. There’s additionally a setting to show off Mute Mode after a selected interval.
Mute Mode is nice for avid gamers who wish to shut down their backup program or different apps when it’s time to play.
Privacy tab
The Privacy tab has options designed to maintain delicate knowledge from leaving your PC, although some are lower than helpful. The Privacy Scanner possibility is meant to mechanically scan social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to optimize your privateness settings. It’s additionally presupposed to scan your internet browsers to verify they’re as personal as doable. In our checks, nevertheless, we solely noticed choices to do that with Internet Explorer, which isn’t a very good look within the age of Windows 10. Chrome help is restricted to a nonexistent toolbar as an alternative of an add-on. This featured ought to both be dropped or considerably reworked.
Maximum Security’s Privacy tab.
Trend Micro additionally added a brand new function referred to as Pay Guard that opens a safe sandboxed browser in Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, however has no Edge help. You can at all times inform when Pay Guard is energetic, as a result of the browser window could have a strong border to point it’s a safe session. Trend Micro recommends you solely use this function for on-line purchasing and banking, not common shopping.
Finally, Data Theft Prevention below the Privacy tab enables you to enter particular data like a bank card quantity, e-mail tackle, or phone quantity that you really want protected. If Trend Micro sees this knowledge entered right into a webpage, e-mail, or instantaneous message, it’ll warn you that the info is leaving your PC. Trend Micro says you don’t must enter your entire quantity both. Just seven consecutive numbers is sufficient to monitor your bank card.
Maximum Security’s knowledge safety in motion.
In our temporary checks, Maximum Security was capable of cease a bank card quantity from going out in a Gmail message, however didn’t do a factor with Slack.
Trend Micro instructed us in 2018 that the Data Theft Prevention function doesn’t help the net sockets protocol, which is why Slack was capable of ship out the info.
Data tab
The Data tab is the meat of Trend Micro’s safety features. Folder Shield protects particular folders in opposition to ransomware, and you’ll specify as many or as few folders as you’d like. Secure Erase eliminates delicate knowledge, whereas Password Manager is a browser-based password supervisor for saving passwords, form-filling knowledge, and safe notes. Vault enables you to encrypt delicate knowledge.
Family tab
Maximum Security’s Data tab.
Finally, the Family tab enables you to use Trend Micro’s parental controls for on-device limitations, resembling limiting internet pages or inserting limits on laptop time.
Those are the primary options. Trend Micro additionally has a settings part accessible through the cog subsequent to the massive Scan button on the primary dashboard. Here you possibly can regulate choices for scanning and the PC Health checkup. There’s additionally an exceptions record to stop Trend Micro from monitoring sure information or folders, and choices to whitelist web sites and trusted Wi-Fi networks.
Returning to the dashboard, subsequent to the settings possibility is a button for displaying safety experiences that present all threats discovered or blocked, outcomes of the most recent PC Health Checkup, a parental controls abstract, and a safety abstract of your browser passwords.
Pricing
Trend Micro Maximum Security has an introductory worth of $40 for as much as 5 gadgets for a single yr—the MSRP after the introductory interval is $90. If you want to cowl 10 gadgets, the value continues to be $40 for the primary yr and $100 after that. Overall, these subscription costs are on par with lots of the different main antivirus suites.
Performance
Taking a have a look at AV-Test’s March and April 2020 results, Trend Micro Internet Security (the lower-tiered suite with the identical safety engine) scored 100 % in January and February on the zero-day and internet/e-mail threats check with 304 samples. It additionally achieved 100 % in each months on the widespread and prevalent malware check with greater than 20,000 samples.
AV-Comparatives had related outcomes. Trend Micro blocked 100 % of 372 pattern threats within the February and March 2020 real-world protection test with 16 false positives. Trend Micro additionally scored 99.2 % in AV-Comparatives’ malware protection test for March 2020 with one false constructive and 0.8 % compromised in opposition to greater than 10,000 malware samples. That compromise share was truly the worst-performing rating for the March 2020 check. Trend Micro’s offline detection fee was additionally low at 52.3 %. When it’s on-line, Trend Micro’s capabilities are strong, however offline it wants some work based mostly on AV-Comparatives’ checks.
Maximum Security with an optimization course of energetic.
SE Labs additionally checked out Trend Micro and gave the corporate’s safety a AAA score with a complete accuracy share score of 98 %, placing it behind Symantec, Avira, Windows Defender, Sophos, ESET, and Kaspersky.
For our in-house checks, efficiency in PCMark 10’s Extended benchmark was 1,638 with Trend Micro put in, in comparison with 1,660 with out. That’s fairly a drop, with the important thing variations being within the digital content-creation and gaming sections. There was additionally a little bit of a drop within the productiveness rating, particularly when working with spreadsheets.
The large-file switch time was additionally slower by virtually 30 seconds with Trend Micro operating, and the archiving time was a shocking 1 minute and almost 15 seconds slower. At first we thought this could be as a result of we carried out the archiving in a folder monitored for ransomware. Going outdoors of these folders, nevertheless, confirmed an identical consequence. Unarchiving was additionally a bit slower by about 40 seconds, and the Handbrake check was slower by about 11 minutes.
The backside line in our checks is that mid- and budget-tier PCs might see a noticeable affect on efficiency with Trend Micro put in.
Conclusion
Trend Micro’s pricing is nice and its safety will get principally prime marks from three totally different testing outfits. Trend Micro employs quite a lot of totally different safety layers together with common scanning, behavioral evaluation, and synthetic intelligence.
While its safety is nice for malware and zero-day threats, the data-protection function wants a bit work. It ignored exercise inside a widely known desktop program, permitting me to ship out purportedly protected knowledge. The social networking privateness function additionally wants a revamp or needs to be dumped.
Still, the value is true for Maximum Security, and its subscriptions fall consistent with what lots of the different prime safety corporations are charging. Strongly in its favor is how easy the interface is to know and navigate.
Overall, Trend Micro Maximum Security is nice safety software program. We don’t have an issue paying for it on the first-year worth, however on the MSRP there are higher choices.
Editor’s notice: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this evaluate is topic to alter with the intention to precisely replicate the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our ultimate evaluate verdict will probably be famous on the prime of this text.