Antivirus software uses a portion of your computer system’s resources while monitoring for malware, which may cause your computer to drag, interrupting even basic tasks such as attaching files to email messages, navigating the web, or playing games online.

For standard computers, the industry average lag time varies between 4 percent and 26 percent, depending on the task you are completing.

Top Ten Reviews tests the performance of antivirus programs by first recording a base time to complete each task without any antivirus software installed on our test computers. These tests are again run as each antivirus program conducts a full virus scan, and we compare this to the base time to find the average lag time. The final score reflects our in-house findings and results of independent labs, such as AV-Test and AV-Comparatives.

You can find these final scores in the comparison of the best antivirus software below.

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Product	Loss of Computer Resource	Overall Rating	Price
Avast Premier 2019 (1 User, 1 Year) [Download]	88	5/5	View Deal
Avira Antivirus Pro 2017 \| 3 Device \| 1 Year \| Download [Online Code]	100	5/5	View Deal
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2018 \| 1 PC, 1 Year \| Download [Online Code] [Online Code]	97	5/5	View Deal
Kaspersky Total Security \| 3 Devices \| 1 Year [Download]	93	5/5	Row 3 - Cell 3
McAfee 2018 Total Protection - 5 Devices [OLD VERSION]	88	5/5	View Deal
Norton Security Deluxe 5 Device PC/Mac	97	5/5	View Deal
Trend Micro Internet Security 2018 (3 Device) [Download]	89	4.5/5	View Deal

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