


Microsoft Defender Antivirus is conspicuously hassle-free. I was pleased to see that Defender appeared in AV Comparatives’ latest real-time malware defence tests, where it blocked 99.7% of malware again and scored no false positives. The SE Labs team found that Defender gave no false identifications of legitimate software as potential threats. In SE Labs’ latest test, it fell just short with a 98% protection rating – it detected 100% of malware, but failed to prevent one virus from getting on the test system. The sheer volume of malware and potentially unwanted programs that Windows systems encounter and report back about gives Microsoft a huge pool of data to help identify and protect against active malware threats.īut how does it compare to the other best free antivirus options out there, and should you look elsewhere for protection? Malware detection performanceĪs usual, Microsoft Defender Antivirus achieved perfect 100% protection scores in AV-Test’s most recent real-time and reference malware detection tests, with just one false positive.
Windows antivirus windows 10#
Microsoft Defender Antivirus, completely free and fully integrated into Windows 10 and 11, has gone from strength to strength to become the most consistently reliable antivirus suites around.

