TotalAV Review (2024): How Good Is It?

#1 TotalAV Review in 2024

TotalAV is a UK-based company that has quickly risen to the top ranks of the antivirus industry. But does it merit its top-tier status among antivirus products? This is the question I wanted to answer.

This review isn't just a once-over glance at TotalAV. Instead, I've invested over a week into thorough research and hands-on testing. I immersed myself in the TotalAV experience so that you don't have to.

My TotalAV review is not just thorough; it's visually engaging too. With more than 40 illustrative screenshots, I’m leaving no stone unturned to give you a detailed look at TotalAV's features.

This TotalAV review offers insights on:

• The power of TotalAV's antivirus engine

• Its effectiveness against ransomware and phishing attacks

• The speed and thoroughness of its scans

• Whether TotalAV is worth the money

• Whether you can trust TotalAV 

• And a lot more 

So if you're unsure how good TotalAV is, this review is for you.

In a Hurry? Here’s a Quick Summary: 

After rigorous testing and analysis, TotalAV has secured a high rank in our list of top antivirus solutions. It has an effective antimalware engine that flawlessly handled all local and web-based threats on my test device. TotalAV is an excellent security option for your PC, Android, or Mac.

TotalAV offers a host of impressive features. For example, the intuitive password manager and system tuneup tools significantly enhanced my productivity on my laptop.

I was also impressed by the minimal impact on system performance and the prompt, helpful customer support.

Here's a quick look at the pros and cons I noticed while writing this TotalAV review:

What You'll Like:

• Effective web protection

• Quick and precise smart scan

• Trustworthy VPN connection

• Efficient password manager

What You Might Not Like:

• No parental control

• No backup functions

• No webcam protection

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What Makes This TotalAV Review Different?

Have you noticed that many antivirus reviews online are not genuine? They often simply repeat the same details and pictures found on the developers' websites. How can you take these "reviews" seriously?

At AntivirusGuide, we do things differently. Our cybersecurity experts purchase, install, test, and review every antivirus product on our site. Our mission is to provide you with the most comprehensive and unbiased reviews of cybersecurity software on the internet.

For instance, this TotalAV review resulted from over a week of testing and analysis, during which I captured nearly 100 screenshots. I selected half of that for this final review, focusing on the most relevant images.

I used a Dell XPS laptop running Windows 10, a Macbook Pro M1, and an Android Galaxy S20 FE.

Still unsure if TotalAV is the right antivirus product for you? Continue reading for more insights.

Buying TotalAV Antivirus 

In this TotalAV review, I purchased the most comprehensive plan for home users, Total Security. When compared to Antivirus Pro (their simplest version), it offers support for six devices instead of three. Total Security also has a VPN, an ad blocker, a password manager, and priority support.

Buying was straightforward, and TotalAV tried to offer me more products. This happened even though I was buying the most costly antivirus package. The extra products were licenses for unlimited devices, a mobile app, an antivirus ebook, and more.

TotalAV only let me pay with PayPal. This is a rule for users living in Romania and a few other countries. I couldn't avoid this rule with a VPN. But if you live in the US, UK, Germany, and other countries, you can also pay with your credit card.

However, I was able to buy through PayPal without problems. I didn't plan to make a PayPal account, but I did and it was pretty simple. Afterward, I entered my email, password, and credit card details on TotalAV’s purchasing page. Then my purchase was done and my PayPal account was made.

I was able to easily buy the most complex version of TotalAV — Total Security — using PayPal.

Installation

For the setup of TotalAV, I first downloaded the installer from a link I got in the purchase confirmation email. Also, after completing the purchase, my account was automatically created. Impressively, the installation was done in just one minute.

While the software was installing, TotalAV provided several helpful security tips. I was not able to choose a language during the installation, but that's not a major concern. If necessary, you can switch the language later in the settings section.

What stood out to me about TotalAV was that it only installed the primary antivirus software, not even browser extensions. If needed, you can add these extensions later. All the features, like the VPN and password manager, are included in the primary software.

The installation was completed in a minute and no additional software was installed.

Interface

After reviewing many antivirus solutions, I concluded that TotalAV's user interface is among the best I've encountered. The design is clean, and the interface is responsive. It also offers a dark theme, which can be easier on the eyes and save battery life.

On the left of the main window, there are icons that open menus for each type of feature: Malware Protection, Internet Security, System Tune-Up, Password Vault, Family Sharing Accounts, and Settings. The design is intuitive — hovering over the icons displays the features of each main category.

The general settings are simple and practical. They allow you to access your TotalAV account, log out, copy your customer ID, and change the language.

There are 12 languages to choose from. While this is not a big number, it includes the most common languages. I also liked that there was no delay when changing languages.

The user interface of TotalAV is among the best I've seen in terms of its smoothness and organization.

Major Features 

Although TotalAV does not have a wide range of features, the ones it does offer work effectively. Discover them in the following sections of this TotalAV review.

Ransomware Protection

Ransomware is one of the most dangerous kinds of malware. Statista reports that in 2022 alone, there were 304 million ransomware attacks, with an average cost of recovering from a ransomware breach of $4.54 million. That’s why strong protection against ransomware is essential for both consumers and businesses.

TotalAV has ransomware attack capabilities. But how well do they work? I used the KnowBe4 ransomware simulation program to find out. At first, the test couldn't start, which is an issue I've experienced with other antivirus programs as well.

TotalAV blocked KnowBe4’s main launcher because it saw it as a threat. To fix this, I recovered the .exe launcher from quarantine, and the test seemed to start. But, TotalAV also blocked the second launcher needed to run the test.

Did the test finally work? Yes, once I recovered the second launcher from quarantine, the test ran to completion.

The results were good. My computer was open to 12 out of 21 ransomware scenarios. While this isn't bad, it's not as efficient as Norton (16/21) or Bitdefender (21/21).

TotalAV's protection against ransomware is good but not the best.

Web Protection    

The web protection feature has its own settings window where you can report false positives.

In terms of settings, there are several notable ones, such as blocking low trust and cryptomining URLs, which have been a major problem recently.

I tested TotalAV's web protection by visiting several links that pretend to be phishing and malware (spyware, trojans, keylogger, and adware) downloads.

The first site I visited was maliciouswebsitetest.com. TotalAV blocked this harmful website, showed a page about the danger of visiting that site, and gave options to ignore it or report a false positive.

The next site I tested was wicar.org. The antivirus blocked all threats I tried to open, except for one that my router software stopped.

Lastly, I tested the cybersecurity tools from AMTSO (Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization). TotalAV successfully blocked these threats, including the compressed malware.

The web protection layer did a great job of stopping various web threats.

Scan

TotalAV uses Avira's strong anti-malware engine, so I expected it to perform well in my TotalAV review. It also has four kinds of scans: smart scan, quick scan, full scan, and custom scan. Let’s discover each one.

Smart Scan — This type of scan is now a feature of all major antivirus programs. It's a fast scan that checks for malware and other risks such as old apps, tracking cookies, and optimizations like deleting junk files.

You can find the smart scan button in TotalAV’s user interface (Malware Protection > Protection Status). During the scan, it shows progress with an animation.

In my tests, the smart scan was quick, taking about three minutes. The scan found a threat from a previous ransomware test, tracking cookies, and junk files. I was able to fix all these issues with one click.

Quick Scan — As the name implies, this scan is fast, taking about a minute. It only checks for a limited number of file types and locations on your hard drive and doesn't scan inside archives. It didn't find any problems with my PC, but the full scan found many more threats, as you'll see below.

Full Scan — The full scan checked almost 700k files and took about 30 minutes to finish, which is average compared to other antivirus solutions I tested on my laptop.

TotalAV found 19 malware and one potentially unwanted program (PUP) leftover from my previous ransomware test.

With one click, I was able to quarantine all of the threats. I also had the option to restore threats individually, but there was no need for that.

The quarantine is a safe place where all the threats are kept until you decide to delete them or restore them if you believe they're safe.

There are many customization options for the full scan. In the Scan settings, you can choose the types of files to scan, scan archives, removable drives, and set up scan schedules. I also like the cloud scanning feature, which sends a rare or unknown file to the cloud for more analysis.

Custom Scan — The custom scan is quite simple. You can only specify what items to ignore, whether to scan inside archives and choose not to scan subfolders. However, there are no options to schedule these scans. 

The smart scan found many optimization problems, and the full scan correctly found 20 threats.

VPN

A virtual private network (VPN) is one of the most important privacy tools for your devices. TotalAV includes a VPN service in their Internet Security and Total Security products, but not Antivirus Pro. It's powered by Windscribe, a respected VPN provider from Canada.

Even though it uses Windscribe’s servers and technology, TotalAV’s VPN doesn't have as many supported servers and countries as the standalone VPN. TotalAV has over 100 servers in 35 countries, but Windscribe has more than 400 servers in 63 countries.

You can easily connect to a VPN location from the user interface. Just click on a country and then the Connect button.

Once connected to a location, it shows you how long you've been connected and the data you've downloaded and uploaded.

But are the speeds and privacy features good?

To test the speeds for my TotalAV review, I compared results from fast.com with and without a VPN connection. Here's what I found:

• No VPN: 100 Mbps download, 430 Mbps upload, and 5 ms latency

• US West: 80 Mbps download, 14 Mbps upload, and 358 ms latency

• Australia: 6.1 Mbps download, 6.8 Mbps upload, and 580 ms latency

• United Kingdom: 83 Mbps download, 21 Mbps upload, and 46 ms latency

The UK server was the fastest, the US server was similar, and the Australian server was the slowest. I'm pretty happy with these download speeds, which are close to my non-VPN connection speeds. But the upload speeds could be better.

For privacy testing, I used ipleak.net and perfect-privacy.com, which check how well my actual IP address and DNS are hidden. The VPN passed all tests, keeping my IP and location private.

I also like that TotalAV has a kill switch option and that it supports two VPN protocols: IKEv2 and OpenVPN.

The kill switch worked well — it automatically stopped my Internet connection when the VPN was turned off. I wasn't sure about the best VPN protocol for me, so I emailed them for advice.

The reply from their customer service was:

“OpenVPN is an open-source technology and, in my opinion, the most secure of the two. This doesn't mean that IKEv2 isn't secure — this technology was developed by Microsoft, unlike OpenVPN, which is decentralized.”

The VPN speeds were better than average, and the kill switch worked flawlessly.

Password Manager

The more online accounts you have, the harder it is to remember all your passwords. This is where a password manager comes in. TotalAV’s version, named Password Vault, includes two parts: the desktop module within the antivirus program and the browser extension.

Before using the manager, you need to set a master password. This keeps your password vault secure. I like how it tells you how weak your password is as you type it.

The password manager allows you to add accounts manually from the user interface.

You can use a password generator when adding an entry, but I’m not sure why you'd need a generator for passwords of accounts you’ve already created.

Alternatively, you can use the browser extension, which automatically create account entries once you log into websites. The extension doesn't have extra features, but it does the job well.

The browser extension did show my account information in login forms. However, I was unhappy with how it saved my username and password. The pop-up allowing the extension to save your account details only shows up for a second on some websites; you need to click the Save button very quickly.

As for the settings, you can set the vault to lock itself after a certain period, which is helpful.

Overall, I like how versatile and simple the password manager is.

TOTAL Adblock

Interestingly, you need to pay to access all features of TotalAV’s adblocking extension unless you've purchased their Total Security suite. Since I bought that, I could use the extension’s full functionality for free. 

You can find the browser installation links in the Internet Security module.

Also, you can install this extension from the Chrome, Firefox, or Edge stores. For this TotalAV review, I installed TOTAL Adblock on my Chrome browser, and it worked well. It displays the number of ads and trackers it blocked and how much time and data you saved.

As expected, you can whitelist websites via the settings. You can also exclude websites from the adblocker manually when you visit them.

So, is TOTAL Adblock worth using? It likely is. The advantage of TotalAV’s adblocker lies not only in its features but also in the fact that it's maintained by a reputable cybersecurity company, which ensures its reliability and effectiveness. 

The extension works blocks advertisements well and has many useful features.

Data Breach Checker

TotalAV’s data breach checker lets you see if any known data breaches have compromised your email addresses. It’s powered by the ”Have I Been Pwned?” online service.

The data breach checker is a feature I haven’t seen in many antivirus programs. Norton has an advanced identity check tool, but it's a more intricate version only available to users in North America, the UK, and Germany.

You can access TotalAV’s data breach checker from the Internet Security menu.

The results will appear online in your TotalAV account. Sadly, two of my email addresses were compromised by two data breaches. I could see which data breaches affected my emails and when.

So, what can you do if your email address has been compromised? TotalAV suggests changing the password and using their password manager. These are good ideas but also remember to use a reputable antivirus solution and be careful when browsing the web.

Another useful feature is monitoring up to 18 websites (you get a notification if a data breach occurs).

The data breach checker found that two of my email accounts had been compromised by data breaches.

System Tune Up

A good digital security program should include a system cleanup tool. TotalAV’s System Tune Up aims to clean and speed up your PC with little effort. Let's see how well it works.

Junk Cleaner — This feature scans for unnecessary files on your computer, like cached Windows updates, recycle bin files, temporary files, and Windows error reporting files. The scan wasn't as deep as I expected, and it quickly found several files. It cleared the 457 MB of junk it found in seconds once I allowed it.

Duplicate File Finder — This tool helps you find duplicate files on your computer. I didn't find anything in my scans since I tend to keep my laptop clean. You can choose to include or exclude files or folders from the scan.

Application Uninstaller — TotalAV’s uninstaller is similar to the Windows version, but it can uninstall multiple programs at once. In my TotalAV review test, I chose two apps for removal — Hotspot Shield and Microsoft OneDrive. The first one was removed quickly, but the second one took a few minutes.

Keep in mind you can't cancel the uninstall process if you change your mind, so be sure you want to remove a program.

Startup Manager — This is a basic version of the built-in Windows startup manager. It doesn’t detect all startup items and only allows you to enable or disable an item. Features like delaying apps from opening, viewing how long it took apps to open, and more are missing.

Browser Cleanup — This feature helps you clean cookies and history from Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera. There are no configuration options, but you can see which items it has selected for deletion. It found a good amount of files, and it removed them in a few seconds once I clicked on the Clean button.

The System Tune Up isn't groundbreaking but has simple yet effective tools.

Independent Testing Results 

The independent German lab, AV-Test, awarded TotalAV with its Top Product award in their latest tests. Although this doesn’t surprise me, it’s quite impressive, given that TotalAV was only founded in 2016. They rigorously evaluated TotalAV’s ability to detect everyday malware, new threats, and its impact on computer speed.

Another independent testing lab, AV-Comparatives, also ranked TotalAV highly in their latest tests. TotalAV scored 3/3 stars for malware protection. This is another impressive achievement considering the strict standards of the Austrian testing lab.

Also, SE-Labs, a British firm for testing security software, evaluated TotalAV’s effectiveness in blocking malware and other cyber threats. It gave the antivirus software the highest rating — AAA — for protection accuracy.

Three of the most respected independent test labs awarded TotalAV top ratings in cybersecurity protection.

System Performance Impact

TotalAV uses very little system resources when idle: at most 0.5% CPU and 300 MB of RAM. This is common for an antivirus when it's not running background checks.

However, during a full scan, TotalAV used more CPU — 35% — and 350 MB of RAM than average. The typical CPU usage among antivirus products is 25%. By the way, Bitdefender used the least amount of CPU — 15%.

TotalAV uses an average amount of RAM, but its CPU usage is higher than average during scans.

Customer Support

The customer support provided by antivirus companies can significantly affect your decision to do business with them. I had a few questions about TotalAV’s features during my tests for this TotalAV review, so I decided to call their support team.

My call was quickly answered. The representative I spoke with had excellent English and seemed to have expert knowledge about the antivirus product. They provided helpful information. Additionally, a support representative replied to my emails within a few hours. The information in the emails was detailed and well-written.

You can also find many resources on TotalAV’s website. These include how-to guides, videos, forums, FAQs, and options to call or email them and submit tickets.

TotalAV’s customer support was fast and answered my questions effectively.

TotalAV Review — Conclusion

All things considered, TotalAV stands out as one of the best antivirus solutions I’ve used. It has a robust antivirus engine that uses cloud scanning for highly accurate malware detection.

Moreover, TotalAV offers strong protection against ransomware and phishing, which helps keep you and your family secure. Although it doesn't have a firewall, parental controls, backup features, or webcam protection, it compensates with a reliable password manager, ad blocker, data breach checker, and a very user-friendly interface.

Also, you can use many of TotalAV’s features for free. Overall, the features are designed for every type of user and are bundled in TotalAV, so they're always at your fingertips.

TotalAV is one of the best antivirus options with powerful protection against ransomware and phishing.

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Octav Fedor (Cybersecurity Editor)

Octav is a cybersecurity researcher and writer at AntivirusGuide. When he’s not publishing his honest opinions about security software online, he likes to learn about programming, watch astronomy documentaries, and participate in general knowledge competitions.