I performed timed tests to see how much slowdown installing McAfee created and redid each test 12 times. During this recent last round of testing I was very impressed with how quickly McAfee stopped malware without causing lag on any of my computers, including a few dinosaurs.

However, McAfee has worked hard to overcome that flaw and over the last year I've seen significant changes in the amount of computer resources it uses. I saw this firsthand during my first few years of testing. Over the last four years of testing antivirus programs, McAfee has been known to create significant lag while installed. Both McAfee AntiVirus Plus and Total Protection safe browsing include anti-tracking that stops cookies and other online trackers from gathering information about your browser history. McAfee's safe browsing feature tagged those sites known to have malicious links or that were phishing schemes. Part of my testing included searching for dangerous sites using search engines. The details McAfee gave for these included the type of malware harbored on the site. McAfee gave similar details when it stopped me from access webpages known to harbor malicious links and phishing schemes. Clicking through to see more details gave me the URL and IP addresses of where the threat is often found, where on my computer it was attempting to download, and how many users have been infected by the malware. Its warning messages appeared as it stopped each threat and gave me details of exactly what was stopped.

In my tests, both of McAfee's programs stopped every malicious file I attempted to download before the download was complete. Here's what both McAfee AntiVirus Plus and Total Protection have in common

In fact, we named McAfee Total Protection as the best antivirus for Windows 10. Total Protection is the better overall option because of the extra protection it offers through its firewall, vulnerability scanner, parental controls and other advanced security tools. Both programs safe browsing features tag search results as safe or dangerous and block malicious websites and stop trackers and cookies. It also surprised me by doing so very quickly and without causing any slowdowns, which has been McAfee's biggest fault in the past. AntiVirus Plus and Total Protection earned perfect scores for stopping malicious files before they could download and infect my test computers.

Mcafee virus protection for mac