76 TECH ADVISOR • MAY 2021GUIDE TO PC SECURITY
ourWindows 10 testmachine,andstart
a secondrunofthebenchmarkatthe
sametime.Thenwecomparetheoverall
scorestoseeif thedeclinebetweenthe
two benchmarksis significant.
Asa harsherstresstest,wealsouse
HandBraketotranscodea videobefore
andafterinstallingtheA/V.Onmost
homePCs,thisencodingtaskutilizes
100 per cent of the CPU. We then
compare transcoding times to see if
there’s any significant decline.
Our test machine is an Acer Aspire
E15 with an Intel Core i3-7100U, 4GB
RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. Each security
suite is tested on a clean install of
Windows 10 Home.
As for the antivirus suite’s detection
capabilities, we’ll rely on the opinions
of security researchers dedicated to this
task. We’ll take into consideration reports
from outlets such as A-V Comparatives,
A-V Test and SE Labs.
We’ll also take pricing into account
and what you get for it.
Whenever possible we’ll review
security suites using a free trial to get a
sense of what consumers see when they
first try out a new product.BEST ANTIVIRUS SUITE 2021
Norton 360 Deluxe
Price: £34.99 from fave.co/373Qple
NortonLifeLock, formerly Symantec,has changed up its security suite line-
up.NortonSecurityPremium,thesuite
we’vereviewed several times, is no
more.Nowit’sallabouttheNorton
360 brandthat combines Norton’s
protection with services from identify
theftprotectioncompanyLifeLock,
whichSymantec acquired in 2016.
By our reckoning, the best choice
in terms of value and capabilities in the
current line-up is Norton 360 Deluxe.
There are two other suites above that
withextraLifeLockfeatures,butfor
mostpeople 360 Deluxe hits the sweet
spot at £34.99 for the first year for new
usersand£84.99forreturningusers,
coveringfive devices.
Norton 360 works with two primary
apps. The first is My Norton, a launcher
fortheactualantivirusprogram
knownasDevice Security. My Norton
is hometootherfeaturesthatcome
with 360 Deluxesuch as Dark Web
Monitoring from LifeLock, a secure VPN,
50GBofcloudbackup,a password
manager,anda link to the Norton
website for parental controls.
DeviceSecuritylooksthesame
asNorton’s other antivirus apps
have for years now. The app has five
sections: Security, Internet Security,
Backup,Performance,andMyNorton.
Thelatteris justa launcher for the
MyNortonapp.