Malwarebytes Premium Review

After extensive research, we think Malwarebytes Premium is one of the best antivirus software choices on the market. It offers real-time protection for your computer and phone against viruses, spyware, ransomware, and more. Plus, Malwarebytes Premium is incredibly easy to use, even for the tech illiterate. It’s not perfect, though. Let’s jump into it in this Malwarebytes review.

• Real-time threat protection
• Advanced antivirus, anti-malware, and antispyware
• Malicious links and phishing protection (PC only)
• Protection against ransomware, zero-day exploits, brute force, and uninstall protection (PC only)
• Malwarebytes Browser Guard extension (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari)

Like other antivirus software like Bitdefender’s Total Security and Norton 360 Premium, Malewarebytes Premium has real-time protection against online threats. This means that as you use your device, the software is actively protecting it from incoming threats instead of just detecting threats after they’re already in your system.

How well does it do the job? Pretty darn well. According to independent testing by AV-Comparatives, Malwarebytes is one of the best at protecting computers from real-time threats. Malwarebytes blocked 99.9% of threats, so not too shabby. Trend Micro and Norton  were the only softwares that did a better job. (They both scored 100% effectiveness.)

Malwarebytes does its job a little too well, sometimes. It tends to offer up threat reports when there are no threats. Over a year of testing time, we found this wasn’t a problem. The software just tells you that something’s malicious, and you can choose to ignore it. False positives don’t happen often enough to be annoying.

During our testing, we found that Malwarebytes antivirus software scans computers that are loaded down with tons of files within just five to ten minutes. During that time, computer performance didn’t seem to decrease much at all. The real-time protection running in the background also didn’t seem to affect the computer’s performance.

Maybe the best thing about Malwarebytes Premium is that it’s blessedly simple. It quickly scans everyday and works quietly in the background. Each day a notification will pop up on your computer to let you know if anything was found. If the software does encounter a problem, it blocks offending malicious websites or quarantines suspicious software and the like.

It does all this without any input from you and is pretty fool-proof.  Real-time protection settings (web, malware, ransomware, and exploit protection) are on by default. Malwarebytes on Windows also automatically sets up a scheduled threat scan for the wee hours of the morning. Of course, you can change these settings if you like, but there’s no need. It will work great without any tweaking.

Some may say that Malwarebytes Premium is a little too basic. Unlike its biggest competitor, Bitdefender Antivirus, it doesn’t have parental control options for keeping your kids safe online, gamer mode, VPN protection, or email scanning. Still, we like this antivirus software for people that like to keep things simple. In fact, Malwarebytes Premium is recommended by IT security expert and SafeWise advisor Pete Canavan.

"Malwarebytes started out as a free anti-malware program that proved itself to be very effective at removing malware on Windows-based systems,” said Canavan.  “It was the go-to program for many PC professionals as well as consumers to help remove malware-infected systems.  It has since evolved into a more robust, professional cybersecurity program that has added anti-virus protection to the anti-malware component.”

If you know that malware, viruses, and those other internet baddies are out there, but you know very little about defending your devices or have no time to mess with an antivirus program, then Malwarebytes Bytes is the perfect solution. It’s the no-brainer antivirus software that keeps your devices safe with very little needed from you or your device.

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1. AV Comparitives, “Real-World Protection Test February-May 2022,” June 14, 2022. Accessed December 2022.