Most free antivirus software provides at least the basic features: on-demand scanning, real-time protection, and web-level detection of dangerous pages. Panda Free Antivirus skips web protection, putting it at something of a disadvantage. Mixed scores in independent lab tests and poor scores in our hands-on tests further drag it down. Feel free to give this attractively designed antivirus a try, but be sure to also give AVG AntiVirus Free and Avast One Essential a whirl, as we’ve named them Editors’ Choice award winners for free antivirus.
Getting Started With Panda Free Antivirus
It’s a snap to install Panda Free Antivirus; just launch the installer and click the big Accept and Install button. The installer points out that free support is available, a service that some antivirus companies reserve for paying customers. During installation, you’ll set up an online Panda account.
With most antivirus tools, the main window is either white or dark gray, with buttons and panels for things like launching scans or checking updates. Panda stands out, with a nature scene as its background. If the default image doesn’t suit your aesthetic, you can choose among a set of eight or set it to cycle through them automatically.
Five minimalist icons at the bottom offer access to things like launching scans, managing the antivirus, and connecting to the VPN. Scrolling down a bit reveals five more icons for other useful features. It's an unusual and attractive look. You can point to any icon to see a descriptive label or click a button to reveal all the labels.
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Mixed, Sparse Lab Results
Whenever I review an antivirus utility, I check results from four independent antivirus testing labs. The simple fact that a program appears in reported results means that the lab believed it merits attention, and the company budgeted for the cost of participation. Panda appears in the latest results from two of the four labs, with scores that range from terrible to excellent.
At AV-Comparatives, testers don't assign numeric scores. Every antivirus that passes a test earns at least Standard certification. Those that perform significantly better than the minimum can receive Advanced or Advanced+ certification. I closely followed three of this lab's tests, and Panda failed two of them due to false positives (valid programs identified as dangerous). In fact, Panda would have earned one Advanced+ and one Standard certification in those tests were it not for “remarkably many” false positives.
The competition seriously outperformed Panda in this lab’s tests. A half-dozen antiviruses— among them, Avast Free Antivirus, AVG, and Bitdefender—took Advanced+ in all three tests.
The four labs each use a different scoring system. For example, SE Labs certifies antivirus tools at five levels: AAA, AA, A, B, and C. The lower levels don’t get much use, though. All the antivirus utilities in the latest test, Panda among them, received AAA certification.
It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
I've developed an algorithm that maps multiple lab scores onto a 10-point scale and yields a lab results aggregate score. Panda’s perfect SE Labs score, combined with its failures at AV-Comparatives, yielded an aggregate of 7.5 points, among the lowest aggregate scores. Also tested by two labs, AVG attained a perfect 10. Among those tested by three labs, Kaspersky and McAfee reached 10 points. Bitdefender routinely takes perfect or near-perfect scores from all four labs—its current aggregate score is 9.9 points.
Scanning and Scheduling
Any time you install antivirus protection on a previously unprotected computer, you should run a full malware scan right away. There's no telling what kind of malicious software might have set up housekeeping in the unprotected device. Panda also offers a quick scan of critical areas only and a custom scan of user-specified folders.
A full scan of a standard clean test system took Panda 135 minutes, a bit longer than the current average of 110 minutes. Unlike in previous years, a repeat test didn’t finish faster.
That initial full scan should sweep away any malware that weaseled onto your system while it was devoid of antivirus protection. In theory, real-time protection should foil future attacks. However, many users like to add a regularly scheduled scan for added protection. Panda’s scheduler lets you set up one or more scans to run daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also choose how thorough a scan you want, checking the whole computer, critical areas only, or a custom set of files and folders.
Mediocre Malware Protection
I appreciate and rely on independent lab test results when they’re available, but I also put every antivirus through my own hands-on testing. Even if all four labs praise an antivirus, I still benefit by seeing its malware-battling skills in action.
My malware protection test starts when I give the antivirus a chance to show off its real-time protection scan. This test uses dozens of real-world malware samples that I collect and analyze myself, so I know how they behave and what traces they impose on the test system.
Many antivirus programs spring into action the moment I open the samples folder. Others, including Avast, AVG, and McAfee AntiVirus Plus, reserve their real-time scanning for that moment just before the malware tries to launch.
Panda’s behavior falls in the middle. It doesn’t scan files just because Windows Explorer displays them, but moving or copying files to a new location is enough to get its interest. When I moved my samples to a new folder, it started gradually nibbling away at the collection. Unlike many other antivirus programs, it didn’t announce every discovery. It seemed to quarantine samples immediately upon noticing them, occasionally displaying a notification when convenient. Panda wiped out 67% of the samples at this point, including all my ransomware samples.
To complete this test, I launched the samples that Panda didn’t wipe out on sight. It didn’t catch very many of them, and in many cases, it only partially prevented installation, allowing executable traces onto the test system. Panda detected 80% of the samples and scored 7.7 of 10 possible points, down from 90% and 8.7 when last tested.
Looking just at competitors tested with this same collection of samples, Panda falls near the bottom. Yes, Bitdefender also scores on the low side, but Bitdefender has the benefit of outstanding results in independent lab tests. Malwarebytes Premium holds the best score against these samples, with 98% detection and 9.8 points. Guardio and PC Matic also reached that score, but I had to modify the testing regimen for them. Guardio only checks files as they’re downloaded in Chrome, and PC Matic works by an allowlisting system, not like most antivirus tools.
I spend a lot of time and effort gathering and curating a new collection of malware samples, so I can only refresh that collection once a year. To check each antivirus tool’s response to the latest malware, I start with a feed of very new malware-hosting URLs generously supplied by London-based lab MRG-Effitas. In this test, programs get the opportunity to either fend off malware by keeping the browser away from the nasty URL or to wipe out the malware sample at the download stage. Older versions of Panda’s free antivirus used to include a feature called Safe Browsing, but this was removed some years ago. At present, the free edition’s only defense is to identify and eliminate malware on download.
Many antivirus programs recognize a malicious download before it has fully arrived, interrupting the process for safety. Panda waits until the download is finished. And waits. And waits. I found I had to count off 10 seconds after each download to see whether Panda would respond, which seriously slowed down the testing.
Using just real-time protection, with no help from the long-departed Safe Browsing component, Panda eliminated 71% of the malware downloads. That score puts it in the bottom quarter of current antiviruses. At the other end of the spectrum, a half-dozen programs fended off 100% of the malware-hosting URLs in their own tests. Among these winners were McAfee, Sophos Home Premium, and ZoneAlarm PRO.
The absence of Safe Browsing in Panda's free edition also means that you get no help with identifying phishing scams. You'll just have to rely on the phishing protection built into your browser and stay alert for those the browser misses.
Ransomware Protection Failure
After my main malware protection test, I checked Panda’s reaction to a second set of samples. These are copies of the main collection but hand-modified so that they don’t match a hyper-focused signature-based detection system. For each file, I changed the filename, appended zeroes to change the size, and tweaked some non-executable bytes.
Most antiviruses do well with the tweaked samples, identifying most of the same ones whose untweaked originals they caught using static detection. Panda proved to be an exception, missing more than 80% of the modified samples, including two-thirds of the real-world ransomware programs.
I took this as an opportunity to check Panda’s ability to detect and block ransomware activity. As usual, I configured a virtual machine with no internet access for safety and then launched each modified ransomware sample that Panda didn’t catch. The real-time antivirus caught a quarter of them after launch but before they could do any damage. One failed to do anything. All the rest did their dirty deeds without a peep from Panda, encrypting anywhere from dozens to thousands of files and leaving notes demanding a ransom.
VPN Limited in Bandwidth, Features
An antivirus protects data that resides on your device, but it can't do a thing for that data as it roams the wilds of the internet. For that kind of protection, you need a Virtual Private Network (VPN). With a VPN, your network interactions travel in encrypted form to the VPN company's server. Nobody, not even the owner of the shady coffeeshop Wi-Fi network you're using, can peek at or tweak your data. As a bonus, your traffic seems to be coming from the VPN server's IP address, so sites that try to track your location and activities using your personal IP address will simply fail.
All of Panda's security programs, even this lowly free antivirus, include a VPN component. However, all of them except Panda Dome Premium, the very top-tier security suite, put some serious limits on your VPN usage. Specifically, you can only use 150MB of VPN bandwidth per day. Hotspot Shield VPN offers 500MB per day in its free version, while the free version of TunnelBear restricts you to 500MB per month—not very useful.
Panda licenses VPN technology and server network from Hotspot Shield’s publisher, as do quite a few other security companies. At first glance, it looks like you can choose a server in any of about two dozen countries, but if you try, you'll find that country selection is a premium feature. All you can do is let the VPN automatically connect to the server it thinks is best.
The VPN's display page keeps you apprised of how much bandwidth you've used, which is important given that 150MB daily limit. For a little hands-on experience, I put on a YouTube playlist and just let it keep playing. In just a few minutes of watching a tourism stream, I managed to use up 52MB. I also noted that the reported data usage changed in big jumps, not in a steady increase. If you get close to the limit on a given day, as I did in about a half-hour of viewing, be prepared for the VPN to cut your secure connection at any time.
Panda doesn't offer the advanced configuration options found in Hotspot Shield itself. For example, with Hotspot Shield, you can arrange to automatically use a VPN connection on unsafe Wi-Fi networks. Hotspot Shield also includes a component that warns users away from dangerous websites, a Kill Switch to disconnect from the internet if the VPN connection fails, and a split-tunneling feature to let some apps bypass the VPN. With Panda, you can configure the VPN to kick in when the PC reboots, but that's it for settings.
Bonus Features
You'd think that a company giving away antivirus protection would reserve bonus security features for the paid edition. You'd be wrong in many cases. For example, with Avast, you get a network security inspector, a simple password manager, a secure browser, a shopping price-checker, and more. AVG AntiVirus Free blocks online trackers, marks up dangerous links in search results, and shreds your sensitive files to prevent forensic recovery. Like Panda, Avira Free Security offers limited VPN protection, along with a secure browser and a tool to check for missing security patches.
Panda's less plentiful bonus features show up in the second row of icons in the main window. These include USB Protection, Process Monitor, and Rescue Kit. The My Products button lets you view everything you’ve installed from Panda. New since my last review is a button for Dark Web Scanner.
You'll notice one facet of USB Protection as soon as you insert a USB drive—Panda offers to scan it for malware. The other side is more proactive, guarding against malware that tries to infect your computer using USB autoplay. Panda calls what it does vaccination. This feature preemptively takes over the resources that USB malware would need for autoplay and locks them down. It's helpful, and it's harmless. I recommend enabling the setting that automatically vaccinates every USB drive inserted into your PC.
Some extra-nasty Trojans prevent Windows from booting; others interfere with the installation of antivirus software. To deal with these challenging problems, you start by using a clean computer to create a bootable Rescue Kit on a USB drive. Reboot the problem computer using the Rescue Kit, and you've got a fully capable antivirus running in an alternate operating system. Windows-based malware doesn't even launch, so it can't interfere with the cleanup process. Once the Rescue Kit has wiped out your existing troubles, you can proceed with installing Panda on the affected machine.
The Rescue Kit page also lets you run Panda’s Cloud Cleaner, an aggressive cleanup-only tool that may remove persistent malware left behind by other security utilities. It’s similar in purpose to Malwarebytes Free or to the Norton Power Eraser tool included with Norton AntiVirus Plus.
The Process Monitor tool isn't meant for the average user. It lists all processes Panda has seen running on your PC and lets you show just those that access the internet, those that have a medium to high threat level, or those that Panda blocked. You can dig in for details, including a list of every web address visited by the program. I can see this being useful to a tech support agent who's attempting to diagnose a problem by remote control, but for the average user, it's too much information.
That leaves the new Dark Web Scanner. Like similar features in many competitors, it scans for possible exposure of your email addresses, scanning “information on the Dark Web and other internet sources.” While there’s a button for this feature, activating it opens your Panda account online. You can add multiple email addresses and scan them one at a time or all together. For ongoing monitoring and notification, you need a premium account.
Not the Best Free Antivirus
Panda Free Antivirus has a gorgeous nature-themed user interface, and its USB vaccination feature is clever, but it failed some lab tests, and it didn’t do well in our hands-on testing, either. It’s easy enough to load up one free antivirus after another, looking for the one that suits you best. When you do that, be sure your candidates include Editors’ Choice free antivirus tools AVG AntiVirus Free and Avast One Essential. The former offers traditional antivirus protection, while the latter ventures into the security suite realm.
Panda Free Antivirus has an attractive user interface, but it lacks protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites and its test scores vary from excellent to dismal.
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