AVG AntiVirus Free 2013 review

In the past few years, we’ve seen AVG consistently achieve better protection than its free rivals. This year, however, a mediocre 91% protection rate against zero-day threats puts it some way behind Avast Free Antivirus’s 98%.

That might be excusable if AVG AntiVirus Free were otherwise a friendly and well-featured package – but sadly, the opposite is true. Although this latest version of the software sports a new Windows 8-inspired interface, it’s still frustratingly unclear which buttons lead to genuine features of the software, and which are merely there to steer you towards AVG’s paid-for products.

In fact, the core features consist of only a virus scanner, an email scanner and a browser plugin. In other words, not only is AVG less effective than Avast – our recommended free antivirus tool – it’s also shorter on features; its 272MB memory footprint is more than three times as heavy.

We’d like to think that stiffening competition will prompt AVG to come back next year with a streamlined package that’s capable of retaking the crown. For now, though, we’d steer clear.