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During Aviras quick scans, the OpenOffice test finished in 2 minutes and 37 seconds, which indicates a system slowdown of 10 percent.

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For example, while we can appreciate Avira Free Antivirus for Mac for its relatively low impact during passive scanning when its running in the background, thats not enough.

Unfortunately, while Aviras malware-detection score is good, its not enough to make it the best Mac antivirus software.

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For Mac protection without any expense, we recommend Avast Free Mac Security; if you can afford 40 per year, then Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac is an even better bet for its perfect detection rates and parental controls.

We review paid antivirus and free antivirus software for Windows separately.) MORE: Best Mac Antivirus Software Costs and Whats Covered As its name declares, Avira Free Antivirus comes without any price tag.

For those who may want technical support and other perks, Avira also offers Avira Antivirus Pro (44.95 per year), which bundles in software for both Mac and Windows, including some of the best antivirus software.

The Avira Prime (9.99 per month) subscription gives you access to all of Aviras paid products, including some of the best Android antivirus apps.

Like most other antivirus products, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac constantly updates its malware-signature database, which receives information from the 100 million users of the companys Windows, Android and Mac software.

Avira stops PC malware on Macs from spreading across external drives and networks.

MORE: What to Do If Your Social Security Number Is Stolen In addition to routine background scans, Avira offers both on-demand and scheduled scans, and scans unopened archive files such as ZIPs.

Antivirus Performance Austrias AV-Comparatives evaluation lab tested Aviras malware-detection skills and found it offered high, but not perfect, protection.

In AV Comparatives July 2017 studies, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac detected 99.1 percent of malware, which translates to catching 681 pieces of malware and failing to detect six.

In comparison, Avast Free Mac Security and AVG AntiVirus for Mac caught 99.9 percent of malware (686 out of 687).

Security and Privacy Features As is often the case with free antivirus solutions, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac is light on extras.

Although it comes with a firewall (disabled by default), macOS has its own already.

A USB scanner tool can be added on by upgrading to Avira Pro.

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While Avira does offer its SafeSearch Plus tool (free) to help you stay away from infected sites, it doesnt install the browser plugin during installation.

Performance and System Impact Avira Free Antivirus for Mac had a mixed impact on system performance.

We assessed the performance hit with our custom OpenOffice benchmark test, which matches 20,000 names and 20,000 addresses on a spreadsheet and measures how long it takes to finish the task.

Our test machine was a Late 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, with a 2.6-GHz Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM and 70GB of data stored on a 512GB SSD.

After we installed Avira Free Antivirus for Mac on our MacBook, the OpenOffice test finished in an average of 2 minutes and 24 seconds, 1.5 seconds longer than the same system took before installation.

Thats a passive system hit of 1.1 percent, on the lower end of the range we found among the eight products we reviewed.

MORE: 7 Easy Ways to Get Your Identity Stolen During a full-system scan, the OpenOffice test finished in 2 minutes and 41 seconds, signifying a performance dip of 18.25 percent, the highest we saw.

AVGs 12.1 percent was the second highest we recorded, and Kasperskys 4.5 percent the lowest.

While Aviras malware-detection score is good, its not quite the best.

Cnet Best Antivirus For Mac 2017