A full scan with Malwarebytes Premium on a system with no malware took about a minute longer than the free edition’s average. Given the average for current products is over an hour, that's quite speedy.

In testing the free edition’s ability to clean up existing malware infestations, I found that the full scan averaged about 90 seconds. When you call for an on-demand scan, you get a full Threat Scan by default, just as you do with Malwarebytes Free. Clicking the middle panel launches a scan. At right, simple toggles control four layers of protection. At left, you can view the stats for the latest scan, or click for full history. When all is well, the panel reports 'Awesome! Your computer is protected.' Three simple rectangular panels occupy the bottom half of the window. Simple Interface, Speedy ScanĪ status panel across the top of the main window features a silhouette-style landscape, with clouds, mountains, and a city skyline. And with McAfee, you pay $59.99 per year to protect every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household. Sophos Home Premium goes for rather less $50 per year lets you install it on up to 10 devices (Windows or macOS). For $79.99 per year, you can protect five devices. Like Webroot, Kaspersky, Bitdefender, Trend Micro, and several others, Malwarebytes costs $39.99 per year to protect one Windows or macOS device. The current version, reviewed here, is Malwarebytes Premium 4.3. Version 2 came out a couple of years before that. The release of version 4 in 2019 was the first whole-number update since version 3 in 2016. Some companies assign a new product version every year, while others eschew product version numbers completely. It earned great scores in our hands-on tests and has begun to get good ratings from the independent testing labs as well.

Behavior-based analysis is a must-have in this world, and Malwarebytes Premium offers exactly that, along with other layers of protection. Recognizing malware by just looking at files is utterly insufficient. Today, though, we’re afflicted with polymorphic malware, pernicious ransomware, and other advanced attacks. Researchers even named some based on the number of bytes they’d add to an infected file. Those early viruses were predictable and easily detected using simple techniques. The earliest antivirus products specifically protected against computer viruses, programs that spread by injecting their code into other programs.

Malwarebytes safe or not