As a security company, what do you do when you've loaded up your top-tier security suite with every available feature? How do you top that? With Panda Dome Premium, Panda Security rises to the occasion by offering VIP support, not just for security issues but for any technical problem.
It also promotes the limited VPN found in the rest of the product line to a full-featured product with no limits on servers or bandwidth.
However, the VPN that Panda licenses isn't one of our favorites, and in testing, VIP support didn't shine.
A simple, one-device subscription for Panda Dome Premium runs $166.99 per year.
The most expensive suite I've reviewed (other than panda) is Kaspersky Security Cloud, at $149.99 per year, but that price gets you 20 licenses, compared to Panda's one; quite a difference.
You pay $190.99 for three Panda licenses and $202.99 for five.
By comparison, Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete gives you five licenses for $79.99 per year, and Bitdefender costs $89.99 for a five-pack.
Climbing farther up the price ladder, you pay $274.99 for a 10-license Panda subscription.
By comparison, a 10-device license for Symantec Norton Security Premium costs just $109.99 per year, way less than a single license for Panda Dome Premium.
Got a lot of devices? For a whopping $334.99 per year you can install Panda on all your Windows, macOS, and Android devices.
Or you could spend less than a third of that total for unlimited McAfee Total Protection licenses.
If you signed up for Panda's VIP protection independent of this suite, you'd pay $15 per month, so the inclusion of VIP support is no small thing.
Likewise, signing up for the VPN service that Panda licenses would cost you $12.99 per month.
But these facts don't mitigate the suite's high prices.
It's true that Panda frequently offers discounts, but so does its competition.
Even when you consider its discounted prices, Panda is way out of the usual ballpark.
Read Me First
Installed on Windows, this suite looks almost identical to Panda Dome Complete.
It has the same nature-scene background, and the same horde of feature icons.
The only visible difference on the main window is a new icon, a stylized diamond that represents VIP support.
In fact, everything about this suite is identical to Panda Dome Complete, with the exception of VIP support and full-featured VPN.
That being the case, you should go read my review of read my review Panda Dome Complete.
There's no point in repeating it here.
Once you've finished, come back to learn what the Premium level adds.
For those of you absolutely refuse to click the link above, here's the very brief rundown: Panda Dome Complete doesn't offer enough value to merit upgrading from Panda Dome Advanced, its predecessor in the Panda product line.
As a standalone, Panda's licensed password manager earned a low rating in our review.
And while its core antivirus features get decent marks from the independent testing labs, they failed one of our tests.
VIP Tech Support
The VIP tech support system can help you with any Panda problems, but it does quite a bit more than just support the suite.
Among other things, the Premium support services web page promises: Social media privacy setup; Configuration of Web browser and email account security settings; Troubleshooting of operating system, application and software problems; and Assistance with peripherals such as printers, cameras and scanners.
In other words, the VIP support agents will help you with just about any technical problem.
While testing Panda Dome Complete, I ran into a problem activating the anti-theft feature.
That gave me a perfect opportunity to put VIP support to the test.
I switched to a laptop running Panda Dome Premium, verified that the problem remained, and clicked the diamond icon.
The resulting page advised me to "Let our experts diagnose and fix remotely any problem you may be experiencing." Once online, I noticed that the VIP support page used the outmoded product name "Panda Gold Protection." To get started working with a support agent, I had to download a local chat client, and that's where my troubles began.
Microsoft Edge reported "Support-LogMeInRescue.exe contained a virus and was deleted." No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it to stop deleting the necessary file.
Chrome wasn't much better; it crashed in the middle of every download.
I finally got the chat client running by switching to Firefox.
Even then, Windows Firewall warned that it blocked some of the app's features; I had to allow access to continue with the app.
I'm not sure how the average user would react to a notification from Microsoft that support for their security software is itself infected, followed by a firewall warning.
Before digging in to the actual problem, I asked the agent to explain why Edge reported the chat client to be infected.
He shrugged off the question, saying it's because "they also have antivirus protection."
I let that nonanswer slide and moved on to the actual problem: Every time I tried to activate Anti-Theft, it rejected my username and password, even when I copied and pasted the password to make sure it was the same password I successfully used for logging into my Panda account online.
The agent had me verify that I'm using a laptop (which is irrelevant, because this feature can't be activated except on a laptop).
He had me reboot, and then used remote control to turn on all the product features I hadn't gotten around to.
He tried connecting through the VPN.
After spending some time trying the failed activation over and over, he had me totally uninstall the program and then reinstall it.
At that point I had no more time, because I had assumed the fix would be quick.
The next day I launched another support session.
As before the chat client quickly reported the name of my support agent, but I got no response for 10 minutes.
I was just about to figuratively hang up when the agent appeared, apologizing with the excuse that he had to tend to many other clients.
That certainly didn't make me feel like a VIP!
The second agent perused the history, tried a few more things, and reported that I "already followed all the steps to resolve this issue." I interpreted that to mean the agent was simply reading a script and running through predefined steps.
Again, this is not something I'd consider VIP service.
On the plus side, once this agent exhausted his script, he escalated my case to a tier-two support agent.
The tier-two agent used remote control to fiddle with the system for a while.
She quite reasonably asked me to briefly change my account password to a value she supplied, so she could try logging in and verify beyond any doubt that the same password worked for the online account but didn't work for Anti-Theft.
But in the end, she didn't find a solution, and once again my available time ran out.
At that point I had spent more than four hours with support, over two days, most of it just suffering through tier-one agents running their scripts.
I am quite sure that the VIP support service solves some problems, especially problems due to the user's inexperience.
But it didn't solve my real-world problem at all, and it didn't leave me with the feeling that I got support at a VIP level.
It's hard to feel confident the support team could fix some weirdness with my six-year-old Mac when they couldn't get past a problem in Panda's own software.
Other companies offer live chat support with remote remediation at no extra cost, though, to be fair, they typically offer this only for problems related to malware or program features, and only after you've exhausted other options.
Full-Powered VPN
An antivirus or security suite protects your files and your data, but only within the bounds of your computer.
Once you start sharing data with the outside world, your local security solution has no power.
That's where a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, comes in.
Your network traffic travels in encrypted form to a VPN server, meaning that nobody, not even the owner of the shady Wi-Fi network you're using, can view or meddle with your data.
And because your network activity seems to come from the VPN server, advertisers and other snoops can't track your activities based on your personal IP address.
As a side benefit, using a VPN may let you access region-locked content by spoofing your own location.
Panda's VPN is a licensed version of AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Elite.
You can read our review of that product for the gritty details.
Briefly, it has a large number of VPN servers crowded into a small number of locations.
That means a smaller chance that you'll find a server near you when you're traveling.
It didn't do very well in our speed tests.
AnchorFree has a complicated reputation when it comes to privacy, but the company has been vetted for use by organizations like Panda, Bitdefender, and Dashlane that license their product.
All the other members of the Panda product line, right down to Panda Free Antivirus, include VPN support.
However, all the products except Premium suffer under some stringent limitations.
There's no option to choose your VPN server—the program makes its own local choice.
And no device can use more than 150GB of VPN bandwidth per day.
Those limitations are common for free VPN utilities, and for other VPNs offered as suite components.
Hotspot Shield's free edition puts a 500GB per day cap on each device, and the free version of TunnelBear limits your usage to 500GB per month.
With the VPN component in Bitdefender Total Security($39.98 for 5-Devices on 1-Year Plan at Bitdefender) and Kaspersky, you get 200MB per day.
Removing those limits costs $4.99 per month with Kaspersky or $49.99 per year with Bitdefender.
At the Panda Dome Premium level, there's no limitation on servers or bandwidth.
The panel on the VPN's window that showed how much of your 150GB you used up instead displays "Unlimited." And when you choose from the list of about two dozen country locations, you don't get an upgrade prompt from the VPN.
There is one limit that surprised me.
No matter how many Panda licenses you've purchased, up to and including unlimited licenses, you can only use the VPN on five Windows, macOS, or Android devices.
In testing, I observed that no matter which country I chose, the VPN displayed the notification "Virtual server." On the plus side, a VPN company can spin up new virtual servers as needed, which means it easily handles variations in demand.
But on the downside, a virtual server may not be physically located in the country it claims to represent.
That can be important to those who rely on a specific country's privacy laws.
Some VPNs let you choose individual servers at the selected location, and many offer statistics that help you choose the fastest server, or the one least cluttered with other users.
That's not something you get with Panda.
In fact, the country list isn't even alphabetized.
Once you've chosen your desired server location, you just click the Connect button to get your protection started.
You can configure Panda to connect through the VPN automatically after reboot.
If you don't choose that option, at least set it to connect any time you're using an insecure Wi-Fi hotspot.
That's about it for configuration options.
Hotspot Shield itself offers more features, among them malware detection and a display that shows you upload speed, download speed, public IP address, and length of VPN session.
For maximum security, we advise that you use a VPN at all times or, at the very least, any time you connect with a network you don't own.
Doing so is tough when the VPN caps your bandwidth.
And with no choice of VPN servers, you miss many benefits of VPN usage.
Panda Dome Premium gives you full-scale VPN protection, with full choice of servers and no cap on bandwidth.
The five-license level is the spot where you get the same number of Panda installations as VPN devices.
At that level, upgrading from Panda Dome Complete to Premium costs $40.60 per year, quite a bit less than if you purchased Hotspot Shield separately.
NordVPN costs over $80 per year, and TunnelBear about $60, but you can get Private Internet Access VPN for less than the incremental price of upgrading to Panda Premium.
ProtonVPN is harder to compare, as it offers different speed ratings at different price levels, but it starts at free.
These four are our Editors' Choice VPNs.
If you're considering Panda Dome Premium because of its full-featured VPN, you should also consider these products.
The Highest Price
Panda Dome Premium boasts one of the most attractive user interfaces in the field, but it also sets records price-wise.
Its unlimited plan costs more than twice as much as the closest competitor, Kaspersky Cloud Security.
Yes, Kaspersky limits you to 20 licenses, but for most users that's as good as unlimited.
At this Premium level of Panda's product line, you get VIP support and a VPN without limits on bandwidth or server selection.
The support we got didn't feel like VIP treatment, though, and even the tier-two support agents couldn't solve a Panda-specific problem in a reasonable amount of time.
Kaspersky Cloud Security is an Editors' choice for cross-platform security, and it works well across all platforms.
Symantec Norton Security Premium, our other Editors' Choice in this field, also offers a broad selection of features and platforms.
In addition, it gives you online backup, the ultimate security, with 25GB of hosted storage.
With these and other choices available at a very considerably lower price, there's just no need to consider Panda Dome Premium for your cross-platform security suite needs.
Sub-Ratings: Note: These sub-ratings contribute to a product's overall star rating, as do other factors, including ease of use in real-world testing, bonus features, and overall integration of features. Firewall: Antivirus: Performance: Privacy: Parental Control:
Pros
Slick, attractive user interface.
Parental content filter.
Effective ransomware protection.
Includes firewall, VPN, USB vaccination.
Supports Windows, macOS, Android.
Cons
Dismal protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites.
So-so score in our malware...
As a security company, what do you do when you've loaded up your top-tier security suite with every available feature? How do you top that? With Panda Dome Premium, Panda Security rises to the occasion by offering VIP support, not just for security issues but for any technical problem.
It also promotes the limited VPN found in the rest of the product line to a full-featured product with no limits on servers or bandwidth.
However, the VPN that Panda licenses isn't one of our favorites, and in testing, VIP support didn't shine.
A simple, one-device subscription for Panda Dome Premium runs $166.99 per year.
The most expensive suite I've reviewed (other than panda) is Kaspersky Security Cloud, at $149.99 per year, but that price gets you 20 licenses, compared to Panda's one; quite a difference.
You pay $190.99 for three Panda licenses and $202.99 for five.
By comparison, Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete gives you five licenses for $79.99 per year, and Bitdefender costs $89.99 for a five-pack.
Climbing farther up the price ladder, you pay $274.99 for a 10-license Panda subscription.
By comparison, a 10-device license for Symantec Norton Security Premium costs just $109.99 per year, way less than a single license for Panda Dome Premium.
Got a lot of devices? For a whopping $334.99 per year you can install Panda on all your Windows, macOS, and Android devices.
Or you could spend less than a third of that total for unlimited McAfee Total Protection licenses.
If you signed up for Panda's VIP protection independent of this suite, you'd pay $15 per month, so the inclusion of VIP support is no small thing.
Likewise, signing up for the VPN service that Panda licenses would cost you $12.99 per month.
But these facts don't mitigate the suite's high prices.
It's true that Panda frequently offers discounts, but so does its competition.
Even when you consider its discounted prices, Panda is way out of the usual ballpark.
Read Me First
Installed on Windows, this suite looks almost identical to Panda Dome Complete.
It has the same nature-scene background, and the same horde of feature icons.
The only visible difference on the main window is a new icon, a stylized diamond that represents VIP support.
In fact, everything about this suite is identical to Panda Dome Complete, with the exception of VIP support and full-featured VPN.
That being the case, you should go read my review of read my review Panda Dome Complete.
There's no point in repeating it here.
Once you've finished, come back to learn what the Premium level adds.
For those of you absolutely refuse to click the link above, here's the very brief rundown: Panda Dome Complete doesn't offer enough value to merit upgrading from Panda Dome Advanced, its predecessor in the Panda product line.
As a standalone, Panda's licensed password manager earned a low rating in our review.
And while its core antivirus features get decent marks from the independent testing labs, they failed one of our tests.
VIP Tech Support
The VIP tech support system can help you with any Panda problems, but it does quite a bit more than just support the suite.
Among other things, the Premium support services web page promises: Social media privacy setup; Configuration of Web browser and email account security settings; Troubleshooting of operating system, application and software problems; and Assistance with peripherals such as printers, cameras and scanners.
In other words, the VIP support agents will help you with just about any technical problem.
While testing Panda Dome Complete, I ran into a problem activating the anti-theft feature.
That gave me a perfect opportunity to put VIP support to the test.
I switched to a laptop running Panda Dome Premium, verified that the problem remained, and clicked the diamond icon.
The resulting page advised me to "Let our experts diagnose and fix remotely any problem you may be experiencing." Once online, I noticed that the VIP support page used the outmoded product name "Panda Gold Protection." To get started working with a support agent, I had to download a local chat client, and that's where my troubles began.
Microsoft Edge reported "Support-LogMeInRescue.exe contained a virus and was deleted." No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it to stop deleting the necessary file.
Chrome wasn't much better; it crashed in the middle of every download.
I finally got the chat client running by switching to Firefox.
Even then, Windows Firewall warned that it blocked some of the app's features; I had to allow access to continue with the app.
I'm not sure how the average user would react to a notification from Microsoft that support for their security software is itself infected, followed by a firewall warning.
Before digging in to the actual problem, I asked the agent to explain why Edge reported the chat client to be infected.
He shrugged off the question, saying it's because "they also have antivirus protection."
I let that nonanswer slide and moved on to the actual problem: Every time I tried to activate Anti-Theft, it rejected my username and password, even when I copied and pasted the password to make sure it was the same password I successfully used for logging into my Panda account online.
The agent had me verify that I'm using a laptop (which is irrelevant, because this feature can't be activated except on a laptop).
He had me reboot, and then used remote control to turn on all the product features I hadn't gotten around to.
He tried connecting through the VPN.
After spending some time trying the failed activation over and over, he had me totally uninstall the program and then reinstall it.
At that point I had no more time, because I had assumed the fix would be quick.
The next day I launched another support session.
As before the chat client quickly reported the name of my support agent, but I got no response for 10 minutes.
I was just about to figuratively hang up when the agent appeared, apologizing with the excuse that he had to tend to many other clients.
That certainly didn't make me feel like a VIP!
The second agent perused the history, tried a few more things, and reported that I "already followed all the steps to resolve this issue." I interpreted that to mean the agent was simply reading a script and running through predefined steps.
Again, this is not something I'd consider VIP service.
On the plus side, once this agent exhausted his script, he escalated my case to a tier-two support agent.
The tier-two agent used remote control to fiddle with the system for a while.
She quite reasonably asked me to briefly change my account password to a value she supplied, so she could try logging in and verify beyond any doubt that the same password worked for the online account but didn't work for Anti-Theft.
But in the end, she didn't find a solution, and once again my available time ran out.
At that point I had spent more than four hours with support, over two days, most of it just suffering through tier-one agents running their scripts.
I am quite sure that the VIP support service solves some problems, especially problems due to the user's inexperience.
But it didn't solve my real-world problem at all, and it didn't leave me with the feeling that I got support at a VIP level.
It's hard to feel confident the support team could fix some weirdness with my six-year-old Mac when they couldn't get past a problem in Panda's own software.
Other companies offer live chat support with remote remediation at no extra cost, though, to be fair, they typically offer this only for problems related to malware or program features, and only after you've exhausted other options.
Full-Powered VPN
An antivirus or security suite protects your files and your data, but only within the bounds of your computer.
Once you start sharing data with the outside world, your local security solution has no power.
That's where a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, comes in.
Your network traffic travels in encrypted form to a VPN server, meaning that nobody, not even the owner of the shady Wi-Fi network you're using, can view or meddle with your data.
And because your network activity seems to come from the VPN server, advertisers and other snoops can't track your activities based on your personal IP address.
As a side benefit, using a VPN may let you access region-locked content by spoofing your own location.
Panda's VPN is a licensed version of AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Elite.
You can read our review of that product for the gritty details.
Briefly, it has a large number of VPN servers crowded into a small number of locations.
That means a smaller chance that you'll find a server near you when you're traveling.
It didn't do very well in our speed tests.
AnchorFree has a complicated reputation when it comes to privacy, but the company has been vetted for use by organizations like Panda, Bitdefender, and Dashlane that license their product.
All the other members of the Panda product line, right down to Panda Free Antivirus, include VPN support.
However, all the products except Premium suffer under some stringent limitations.
There's no option to choose your VPN server—the program makes its own local choice.
And no device can use more than 150GB of VPN bandwidth per day.
Those limitations are common for free VPN utilities, and for other VPNs offered as suite components.
Hotspot Shield's free edition puts a 500GB per day cap on each device, and the free version of TunnelBear limits your usage to 500GB per month.
With the VPN component in Bitdefender Total Security($39.98 for 5-Devices on 1-Year Plan at Bitdefender) and Kaspersky, you get 200MB per day.
Removing those limits costs $4.99 per month with Kaspersky or $49.99 per year with Bitdefender.
At the Panda Dome Premium level, there's no limitation on servers or bandwidth.
The panel on the VPN's window that showed how much of your 150GB you used up instead displays "Unlimited." And when you choose from the list of about two dozen country locations, you don't get an upgrade prompt from the VPN.
There is one limit that surprised me.
No matter how many Panda licenses you've purchased, up to and including unlimited licenses, you can only use the VPN on five Windows, macOS, or Android devices.
In testing, I observed that no matter which country I chose, the VPN displayed the notification "Virtual server." On the plus side, a VPN company can spin up new virtual servers as needed, which means it easily handles variations in demand.
But on the downside, a virtual server may not be physically located in the country it claims to represent.
That can be important to those who rely on a specific country's privacy laws.
Some VPNs let you choose individual servers at the selected location, and many offer statistics that help you choose the fastest server, or the one least cluttered with other users.
That's not something you get with Panda.
In fact, the country list isn't even alphabetized.
Once you've chosen your desired server location, you just click the Connect button to get your protection started.
You can configure Panda to connect through the VPN automatically after reboot.
If you don't choose that option, at least set it to connect any time you're using an insecure Wi-Fi hotspot.
That's about it for configuration options.
Hotspot Shield itself offers more features, among them malware detection and a display that shows you upload speed, download speed, public IP address, and length of VPN session.
For maximum security, we advise that you use a VPN at all times or, at the very least, any time you connect with a network you don't own.
Doing so is tough when the VPN caps your bandwidth.
And with no choice of VPN servers, you miss many benefits of VPN usage.
Panda Dome Premium gives you full-scale VPN protection, with full choice of servers and no cap on bandwidth.
The five-license level is the spot where you get the same number of Panda installations as VPN devices.
At that level, upgrading from Panda Dome Complete to Premium costs $40.60 per year, quite a bit less than if you purchased Hotspot Shield separately.
NordVPN costs over $80 per year, and TunnelBear about $60, but you can get Private Internet Access VPN for less than the incremental price of upgrading to Panda Premium.
ProtonVPN is harder to compare, as it offers different speed ratings at different price levels, but it starts at free.
These four are our Editors' Choice VPNs.
If you're considering Panda Dome Premium because of its full-featured VPN, you should also consider these products.
The Highest Price
Panda Dome Premium boasts one of the most attractive user interfaces in the field, but it also sets records price-wise.
Its unlimited plan costs more than twice as much as the closest competitor, Kaspersky Cloud Security.
Yes, Kaspersky limits you to 20 licenses, but for most users that's as good as unlimited.
At this Premium level of Panda's product line, you get VIP support and a VPN without limits on bandwidth or server selection.
The support we got didn't feel like VIP treatment, though, and even the tier-two support agents couldn't solve a Panda-specific problem in a reasonable amount of time.
Kaspersky Cloud Security is an Editors' choice for cross-platform security, and it works well across all platforms.
Symantec Norton Security Premium, our other Editors' Choice in this field, also offers a broad selection of features and platforms.
In addition, it gives you online backup, the ultimate security, with 25GB of hosted storage.
With these and other choices available at a very considerably lower price, there's just no need to consider Panda Dome Premium for your cross-platform security suite needs.
Sub-Ratings: Note: These sub-ratings contribute to a product's overall star rating, as do other factors, including ease of use in real-world testing, bonus features, and overall integration of features. Firewall: Antivirus: Performance: Privacy: Parental Control:
Pros
Slick, attractive user interface.
Parental content filter.
Effective ransomware protection.
Includes firewall, VPN, USB vaccination.
Supports Windows, macOS, Android.
Cons
Dismal protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites.
