Some antivirus companies put all their best technology into their free antivirus products.
By doing so, they gain mindshare and a good reputation, which helps them sell their commercial antivirus and suite products.
It seems that Panda doesn't buy into this plan.
The company does offer Panda Free Antivirus, but the free edition lacks some significant layers of protection.
Most surprisingly it no longer includes the Safe Browsing component that protects you against malicious and fraudulent websites.
If you need a free antivirus, you can do a lot better.
With most antivirus tools, the main window is either white or dark gray, with buttons and panels for things like launching scans or checking updates.
Panda stands out from the rest, with a nature scene as its background.
Five icons at the bottom offer access to things like launching scans, managing the antivirus, and setting up VPN protection.
Scrolling down a bit reveals five more icons for other useful features.
It's an unusual look, and quite attractive.
So-So Lab Results
More important that its looks, however, are its lab results.
Whenever I review an antivirus product, I check results from four independent antivirus testing labs.
Just the fact that a product appears in reported results means that the lab believed the product merited attention, and the company budgeted for the cost of participation.
Panda appears in the latest results from two of the four labs, with scores that are just OK.
The experts at AV-Test Institute rate antivirus utilities on three criteria.
Protection against malware attacks is essential, of course.
A low impact on Performance means users won't trade security for convenience.
And products that avoid flagging valid sites or programs as malicious earn a good score for Usability.
A product can receive six points in each area, for a maximum of 18 points.
In the latest reported results, Panda received the full six points for protection, which is good.
A few false positives brought its Usability score down to 5.5 points, though, and it earned just 5 points in the Performance test.
With a total of 16.5 of 18 possible points, Panda trails Avira Antivirus, Bitdefender, Norton, and several other products that earned a perfect 18 points.
More than half of the products in the latest test report earned at least 17.5 points, enough to get them designated a Top Product by the lab.
At AV-Comparatives, testers don't assign numeric scores.
Every product that passes a test earns Standard certification.
Those that perform significantly better than the minimum can receive Advanced or Advanced+ certification.
I closely follow four of this lab's tests; Panda participates in three of them.
With one Advanced+ and two Advanced ratings, it's doing well.
However, other products seriously outperformed Panda with this lab.
In particular, Avast Free Antivirus and Bitdefender took Advanced+ in all four tests.
Lab Test Results Chart
The four labs each use a different scoring system.
For example, SE Labs certifies products at five levels: AAA, AA, A, B, and C.
I've developed an algorithm that maps all the scores onto a 10-point scale and reports a lab-results aggregate.
Panda's aggregate lab score of 8.9 points is decent, better than when I last put it to the test.
Tested by all four labs, Avira, Kaspersky Free, and Avast came out to 9.9, 9.6, and 9.3 points respectively.
With excellent scores from three of the four, Bitdefender owns a perfect 10 points.
Scanning and Scheduling
Any time you install antivirus protection on a previously unprotected computer, you should run a full malware scan right away.
There's no telling just what kind of malicious software might have made its home in the unprotected device.
A full scan on my standard clean test system took an hour and 22 minutes.
That's about the same as Sophos, and roughly twice the current average.
Avast and Avira took even longer, at more than two hours.
It's true that some antivirus products use the initial scan to optimize future scans.
For example, the first scan with Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus ran about as long as Panda, but a repeat scan finished in about seven minutes.
Panda did run faster the second time, but it still took 50 minutes.
Of course, you can still use your computer while Panda is scanning, but you might want to run your scans at low-use times.
The scheduler lets you set up one or more scans to run daily, weekly, or monthly.
For each scheduled scan, you can have it check the whole computer, critical areas only, or a custom set of files and folders.
Diminished Malware Protection
Lab results are important, of course, but I also put every antivirus through my hands-on malware protection tests.
One simple test uses antivirus samples that I collected and analyzed myself.
The real-time protection in some antivirus utilities starts checking on these the moment Windows Explorer displays their details, wiping out any known nasties.
With other products, including Avast, AVG, and McAfee AntiVirus Plus($14.99 at McAfee Australia), real-time protection doesn't kick until the malware tries to launch.
Panda doesn't scan files just because they've appeared in Windows Explorer, but moving or copying files to a new location is enough to get the interest of its real-time scanner.
When I moved my samples to a new folder, it started gradually nibbling away at the collection, stacking up popups in the bottom right corner, with an indicator for the number of notifications.
Unlike some, it didn't wait for me to view and dismiss the popups.
The whole stack vanished shortly after the last new popup appeared.
Continuing the test, I launched the handful of samples that remained after the initial culling.
Considering both types of protection, Panda detected 90 percent of the samples and scored 9.0 of 10 possible points, edging out the 8.9 points earned by Avast and AVG AntiVirus Free.
Challenged with precisely the same collection of samples, Sophos Home Free scored 9.3 points.
Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus($18.99 for 1-Device on 1-Year Plan at Webroot) outshone the rest with a perfect 10 points.
Malware Blocking Results Chart
I maintain a second set of samples, hand-modified versions of the found-in-the-wild originals.
For each sample, I change the filename, append zeroes to give it a different file size, and overwrite some non-executable bytes.
As with the unmodified samples, I moved these to a new folder, to trigger Panda's real-time protection.
Panda missed fully 60 percent of the samples whose originals it detected, which isn't good.
This figure suggests a signature-based detection system that's overly rigid.
I noticed that a couple of my real-world ransomware samples were among the modified samples Panda missed.
Just to see what would happen, I launched those.
The results were dismal.
A Cerber sample encrypted all my documents and posted its ransom warning, without a peep from Panda.
And the pernicious Petya rendered the virtual machine test system unusable by encrypting its entire hard drive.
My next step was to challenge Panda with a collection of the newest malware-hosting URLs, ones recently discovered by MRG-Effitas.
In this test, products get the opportunity to fend off malware by keeping the browser away from the nasty URL, or wipe out the malware sample at the download stage.
Since my last review, Panda has removed the Safe Browsing feature from the free edition, so its only defense is to identify and eliminate malware on download.
In this test, Panda missed almost twice as many verified malware downloads as it detected.
For quite a few of the samples it did detect, its cleanup process crashed Internet Explorer.
With just 35 percent protection, its score is one of the lowest I've recorded.
At the other end of the spectrum, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition, Norton, and Trend Micro defended against 99 percent of malware downloads.
Sophos managed 97 percent, and Avira 96 percent.
Panda's performance is just dismal by comparison.
In addition, the absence of Safe Browsing in Panda's free edition means that you get no help with identifying phishing scams.
You'll just have to rely on the phishing protection built into your browser, and stay alert for those the browser misses.
See How We Test Security Software
Limited VPN
An antivirus protects your data when it's on your device, but can't do a thing for that data as it roams the wilds of the internet.
For that kind of protection, you need a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.
With a VPN, your network connections travel in encrypted form to the VPN company's server.
Nobody, not even the owner of the Wi-Fi network you're using, can peek at or tweak your data.
As a bonus, your traffic seems to be coming from the VPN server's IP address, so sites that try to track you using your personal IP address simply fail.
All of Panda's security products, even the lowly free antivirus, include a VPN component.
However, all of them except Panda Dome Premium, the very top product, put some serious limits on your VPN usage.
In particular, you can only use 150MB of VPN bandwidth per day.
AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Elite offers 500MB per day in its free version, while the free version of TunnelBear restricts you to 500MB per month—not very useful.
In fact, Panda licenses VPN technology and server network from AnchorFree, as do quite a few other security companies.
At first glance, it looks like you can choose a server in any of about two dozen countries, but if you try, you'll find that country selection is a premium feature.
All you can do is let the VPN automatically connect to the server it thinks is best.
The VPN's display page keeps you apprised of how much bandwidth you've used, which is important given that 150MB daily limit.
For a little hands-on experience, I visited a couple media-heavy sites and watched a video on YouTube.
Strangely, the reported data usage didn't change from zero bytes until it reached one whole megabyte.
If you reach 149MB on a given day, be prepared for the VPN to kick you off at any time.
Panda doesn't offer all the configuration options found in Hotspot Shield itself.
For example, with Hotspot Shield you can arrange to automatically use a VPN connection on unsafe Wi-Fi networks.
Hotspot Shield also includes a component that warns users away from dangerous websites.
With Panda, you can configure the VPN to kick in when the PC reboots, but that's about it for settings.
During installation, you can optionally install Panda Smart Shopping, a price checker much like Avast's SafePrice.
When you visit a shopping site, you can check whether Panda supports it by pointing to the toolbar icon.
If it does, you just shop as usual.
In the background, Panda searches for your selected items on other sites, and also looks for special deals on the current site.
If it finds anything useful, it slides in a banner at the top of the page to report.
For example, when I searched for an adult Chewbacca costume at Walmart, it found several shipping deals on the site, and proposed some deals on other sites.
I didn't actually find the suggested deals very useful.
If I'm looking for a Chewbacca costume, a discount on Star Wars toys or tie fighter cufflinks just doesn't seem relevant.
But there's no harm in letting Panda try to save you money.
Bonus Features
You'd think that a company giving away antivirus protection would reserve bonus security features for the paid version.
You'd be wrong, in many cases.
For example, with Avast you get a network security inspector, a simple password manager, a secure browser, the shopping price-checker I mentioned, and more.
AVG blocks online trackers, marks up dangerous links in search results, and shreds your sensitive files to prevent forensic recovery.
Like Panda, Avira offers limited VPN protection, along with a secure browser and a tool to check for missing security patches.
Panda's bonus features show up in the second row of main-window icons.
You'll notice one facet of USB Protection as soon as you insert a USB drive—Panda offers to scan it for malware.
The other side is more proactive, guarding against malware that tries to infect your computer using USB autoplay.
Panda calls what it does "vaccination." Basically, it preemptively takes over the resources that USB malware would need and locks them down.
It's helpful, and it's harmless.
I recommend flipping the switch that automatically vaccinates every USB drive.
Some extra-nasty Trojans prevent Windows from even booting, or interfere with installation of antivirus software.
To deal with these challenging problems, you start by using the Rescue Kit on a clean computer to create a bootable USB drive or DVD.
Reboot the problem computer using the Rescue Kit and you've got a fully capable antivirus running in an alternate operating system.
Windows-based malware doesn't even launch, so it can't interfere with the cleanup process.
Once the Rescue Kit has wiped out your existing troubles, you can proceed with installing Panda.
The Process Monitor tool isn't for most users.
It lists all processes that Panda has seen running on your PC, and lets you show just those that access the internet, those that have a medium to high threat level, or those that Panda blocked.
You can dig in for details, including a list of every web address visited by the program.
I can see this being useful to a tech support agent who's attempting to diagnose a problem by remote control, but for the average user it's too much information.
Not an Improvement
Panda Free Antivirus has an unusual and attractive user interface, and it feels speedy and lightweight.
The USB vaccination feature is unusual and clever.
But since our last review it has totally dropped Safe Browsing protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites.
As a result, it tanked our malicious URL test and did nothing to warn about phishing sites.
It gets mixed scores from the independent labs, and its protection failed against two modified ransomware samples.
You can do a lot better in the free antivirus realm.
All four of the labs I follow include Avast Free Antivirus and Kaspersky Free in their testing, and both earned scores from good to excellent.
Both offer the protection against dangerous and fraudulent URLs that Panda lacks.
Avast offers a surprising range of bonus features for a free product.
Either of these Editors' Choice free antivirus tools will serve you better than Panda Free Antivirus.
