2013 Antivirus Software Reviews

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Panda Internet Security 2013 Overall Score: 69%

Panda Internet Security 2013 offers the same virus protection as Panda Antivirus plus extra security. There are several areas where Panda simply falls short of its competition.

For starters, we remember last year the software was incorrectly labelled.

Then, though we gave no indication for warrant this, Panda sent a welcome email to us in Spanish.

After download, a shortcut was put on our desktop for their upsell product, BeAnywhere, which was annoying, but then there was not even a shortcut for Panda.

Their "Safe Browser" featured turned out to simply be a link to another product - Sun/Oracle VirtualBox - not integrated into Panda at all. It also failed to install correctly.

As for virus protection, Panda performed ok and the firewall performs well, which is important. But real-time protection is simply not good enough - several threats slipped through. Antiphishing protection was also poor, as was virus removal.

The user interface works, but is overly-colorful and unpleasant.

Free technical support was not customer-friendly. Overall, we don't recommend this product, especially when there are several better ones out there, and also because their basic product is just as good, as the case may be.

Certified by:

• AV Comparatives
• Anti-Malware Test Lab (low score)
• PC Security Labs
• Malware Research Group
• AV-Test (low score)
• ICSA

Virus protection is Panda's strongest suit. But even this wasn't great.

The firewall performs ok, but missed some of the more advanced threats.

Real-time protection was also good and identified over 92% of the zero-day threats.

Panda could not completely remove 10% of our test malware (though was good at removing some particularly tough viruses).

The antiphishing filter performed worse than Internet Explorer's free filter.
Resource usage was pretty average.

CPU usage was just over 1% when idle. Memory usage was about 53%.

During manual scans, CPU stayed around 56% while memory hovered around 62%.
Panda's user interface has no major glitches, but is not comfortable. It's overly-colorful, for one.

Also, clicking options opens up a pop-up window, which we found confusing since we were then dealing with two separate interfaces.
Panda offers both free and paid technical support.

Free support comes in the form of searchable FAQs, forums, and video tutorials. We found links to these difficult to find on their website, including phone numbers.

In addition, they offer a Wizard that suggests custom support based on your identified problem, however, it just points you right back to the free, self-help options.

For any real support, such as virus removal, it gets expensive fast. Panda outsources their support to a company called "Advanced Tech Support." They offer a complete PC protection package (which includes virus removal) for $250 yearly. Or, a one time fee of $130 depending on your level of infection. Far too much for our liking.

And the fact that Panda doesn't even manage support of their own product gives us less confidence in them.
Updates are downloaded automatically — a feature you can turn off, if desired.

However, there is not any option to adjust the frequency of the downloads, or anyway to even know what the schedule is.



Panda offers a couple of notable extra features.

Backup & Recovery backs up all files to an online server. However, though Panda claims it offers this service, but in reality, they simply offer a link to the site - Mozy.com.

Parental Controls offers site blocking by category and by specific website addresses. However, there is no option for time controls, blocking for applications, or reporting. In addition, its not password protected, which allows a child to simply turn off the entire program.
Overall, we found more problems than solutions with Panda Internet Security 2013.

True, many viruses and malware were blocked, but not enough.

The interface is not user-friendly and technical support was clearly not offered with the customer in mind.

In addition, all of this is offered at one of the more expensive price points on the market — $59.99.

Ultimately, we do not recommend Panda this year.