Norton Antivirus Review

Table of Norton Features

General

The following table sums up the general features of Norton Antivirus.

Threat Protection

The following table sums up the availability of threat protection capabilities in Norton Antivirus.

Privacy Features 

Protection from viruses is no longer the only thing that decides a good antivirus software. Privacy is a highly important factor nowadays and Norton Antivirus does a good job at it. We are ready to test it and discuss all privacy features in the next sections. 

·       Safe Browsing VPN 

Norton 360 plans come with a free secure VPN with servers in more than 25 locations, including France, Australia, India, Ukraine, and the USA. Using its auto-connect, you can set it to connect to the fastest server available automatically, or else you can manually connect to a server of your choice. Norton’s VPN offers the following security features. 

• 256-bit AES bank-grade encryption
• Unlimited data 
• Split Tunneling to choose traffic you want to encrypt
• No-logs policy
• Kill switch
• Ad tracker blocking

We tested how Norton VPN will affect our internet speed by doing a speed test using speedtest.net and found out that it significantly reduces the speed. Also, the number of pings increased significantly. Therefore, we think the speed is not as good as most industry-leading VPNs like ExpressVPN, NordVPN would provide. This can be slightly frustrating to some of you. 

The following image shows our download and upload speeds without connecting to the VPN.

The Following image showed our download and upload speeds when we connected to the Norton VPN using the France server.

In our tests, we were able to access the geo-restricted content of Netflix in several countries, but it did not allow torrenting because it got disconnected as soon as we tried to download torrents. 

·       Safe Search, Home Page, Safe Web Extensions

Norton Antivirus comes with three browser extensions to enable online threat protection allowing you to browse the internet safely. Norton safe search web extension shows the site safety ratings in your search results. If the URL is safe to access using a green tick mark like in the following example, it provides a full report about the URL. 

If the URL is not safe, like in the following example, it will indicate that from a red cross mark. When we tested malicious website URLs hosted in wicar.org, Norton could successfully block all the malicious URLs. So we think Norton online threat protection is working 100% as expected.

·       Parental Control

Apart from the privacy mentioned above, Parental Control is available with Norton’s more higher-priced plans and Norton Family. It offers restriction levels based on age groups allowing you to impose different rules for your children.  

Norton also provides a new feature called School-Time. It allows you to limit your children’s online activity during certain hours by letting them access only allowed websites and categories.

Overall, Norton provides useful and must-have privacy features. In all our tests, the safe web worked as expected, blocking all the malicious URLs. The VPN has essential security features, a no-logging policy, additional security features, and a bank-grade encryption mechanism. But the speed test results show it significantly lowers your internet speed. 

Therefore, based on our experience using its privacy features, we give Norton 4.5 out of 5 stars. 

Security

Norton offers you several security options to protect your device from a range of cybersecurity threats. Keep reading to find out our review on how its Malware scanners and other security options work.

·       Malware protection

Norton's malware scanners powered by AI and Machine Learning provide real-time protection against different types of cyber threats like Malware, Spyware, Ransomware, Adware, Scareware, Keyloggers, Trojan Horse, Rootkit, to name a few.

Like in many antivirus software, the Norton malware protection kicked off as soon as we opened a folder containing malware examining it right away. At the end of a malware scan, Norton displays the number of trusted files and skipped files. Trusted files are known files that Norton safely excludes from scans to reduce the time it takes to run a scan.

During our tests, we downloaded test malware files from ecar.org. Nortons’ malware scanner was able to detect and remove all those malware successfully quickly. So we saw a 100% successful malware detection rate in Norton antivirus software.

·       Password Manager

Many antivirus software offers password managers that only provide basic features, but Norton password manager provides more advanced and insightful features. It uses strong 256-bit AES encryption and offers unlimited password storage. 

First,  you have to set up the master password, and then you can add account logins to the password vault. 

Norton then automatically fills the login email address and password whenever you try to log in to them. Its vault safety dashboard provides insights on insecure passwords, and you can use its “Auto Change” feature to generate new passwords automatically. 

·       SafeCam 

SafeCam is a great feature that helps you to protect your webcam from hackers. Safecam automatically alerts you if a hacker tries to gain access to your webcam. You can authorize web applications to access the webcam, permanently block programs from accessing it and control any webcam access attempts by programs.

·       Firewall

Nortons’ firewall offers excellent protection against different types of cyber intrusions. Many customization options, including automatic program control, can block malicious traffic and control low-risk applications. If you are on a wi-fi network, Norton firewall can detect many types of attacks, as you can see from the following image. Apart from setting up traffic rules, you can also control internet access to individual programs. 

In summary, Norton’s malware scanner does a great job detecting all of our test malware without affecting the PC’s performance. Its real-time threat detection could detect and remove all the malware as soon as we downloaded them. In addition, SafeCam adds an extra layer of protection preventing hackers from accessing your webcam. Its Firewall has a comprehensive set of customization options securing your PC from different types of vulnerabilities. Therefore, we give Norton antivirus 5 out of 5 stars for its Security features.

Performance

Next, we turn our heads towards the different scanning options of Norton.

Scanning options

Malware protection comes with the following scanning options for all subscriptions.

• Quick Scan - Scan only the key areas of your device
• Full System Scan - A comprehensive scan that examines the entire device
• Custom Scan - Select what types of scans you want to do.
• Custom Task - Executes live updates, performance, and backup tasks
• Norton Power Eraser - It is an aggressive scanner where it detects difficult to detect tasks. However, there is a risk of marking even legitimate programs for removal. Therefore, you need to make sure to review all the scan results before clicking the fix button.
• Norton Insights  - Determines which files need to be scanned.

It took us around 20 minutes to complete a quick scan, and we didn’t observe any performance issues.  Full System Scan took around 1.5 hours on our Windows PC, but we did not notice any significant impact on the machine performance. 

Norton Insight shows you the percentage of trusted files. Having a higher trust percentage means your scan becomes quicker because the scanner excludes trusted files from scans.

• Norton Diagnostic report gathers information about your computer, provides a report on problems, and lets you fix them. You can save, email, and print that report when required. For example, one of our scans showed problems in startup programs, and when we tried to fix it, it opened up the startup manager tool. 

The startup manager tool listed down all the software installed in the computer with its community and resource usage. You can then select which programs you need to start automatically when the computer is turned on based on that usage data. By doing that, we can improve the startup performance by 2-5 minutes.

PC Cloud Backup

Backup helps you restore important data if you lost it due to a malware attack that was managed to get through the virus scanners. Norton’s Cloud Backup is a useful tool that is limited to PC users and offers the following features :

• Create a new backup set
• Delete backup set
• Rename backup set
• Restore backup set

There are a few steps involved in running a cloud backup using Norton. First, you have to choose what to backup or accept Norton's default backup set. Next, choose your backup location. By default, Norton selects it as Cloud Storage, which you have to activate by clicking the link and logging into your Norton account.

You also have the flexibility to keep the backup in local storage as a removable drive. Finally, you have to define the backup schedule. You can select a weekly, monthly, or manual backup schedule if your backup location is local. If it is cloud storage, choose the Automatic mode, which automatically backs up files when your machine is idle.

Backup restore is also easier with Norton Backup, where you have to select the backup set, choose what you want to restore, and the destination. 

Overall, Norton provides pretty good scanning options and an easy-to-setup and use backup tools. Based on our experience using them, we give Norton 5 out of 5 stars.

Lab Test Results

Norton is always a good pick of many dependent lab tests done by several well-known institutions. One example is lab tests done by AV-Test Institute that rates antivirus software from 3 different areas: protection, performance, and usability, where products can get a maximum of 6 points for each category.

According to the lab test for best windows antivirus products for home users conducted from July to August 2021, Norton has achieved 6 points for all three categories and is certified as a top product. It is similar to the results achieved by other top antivirus products like Kaspersky, AVG but better than McAfee, Malwarebytes, MicrosoftDefender, which got slightly lower scores for some areas.

It also appeared in Malware Protection Test done by AV comparatives in September 2021. The results show offline and online malware detection rates where Norton showed 80% and 97.5% detection rates, respectively, but the protection rate was 100%. According to the results, the protection rate was much better than AVG, Avast, and Kaspersky, which showed less than a 100% protection rate. 

However, they have also conducted a false alarm test to evaluate the ability to distinguish good files from malicious files, and surprisingly, Norton has shown a high false-positive rate.

Ease of Use and User interface (UI)

Downloading Norton is easy, and the whole installation took around 6-8 minutes. After the installation, you will get a product tour that we found very useful, especially for first-time users. Norton has a simple and well-designed user interface where all the features listed on the main screen. 

You have two options called My Norton or Classic launch view to select as your first view when you launch Norton. The divider in the middle divides the account options and main features, providing you with a clean interface. The Home button is always there for you if you lose during the navigation. 

To access the sub-menus of most features, you either have to click on the main button or select from the drop-down. We think the menus could have been designed more conveniently than this. Although the simple UI keeps the interface as less cluttered as possible, we felt that they have unnecessarily used more space for graphics than efficiently utilizing it to provide more accessibility for features settings and sub-menus. Also, most of its windows open in the browser or outside the main window, which we found a little bit inconvenient because those could have been navigated inside the main window itself.

We found its search option very useful because it lets you easily search the UI for settings and features and provide a short description along with them. There is also a help menu that has a  lot of helpful links and contact information. The UI also provides Norton Live Update to install the which live, which product and protection quickly update.

We evaluated this section based on the following criteria.

• The overall quality of the UI
• How fast you can navigate to its features and settings
• How easy for someone with little knowledge can grasp its functionalities. 
• The customizations 

According to our experience, we give 4 out of 5 stars for the ease of use and UI section.

How to Set up and Uninstall

 Setting up Norton Antivirus software is a quick and easy process. 

1. First, download the My Norton Downloader from the download page you get once you complete your registration. The download only takes approximately 2-3 minutes.

2. After you download it, you can click on the Install button.

3. After that, it will start installing the software, which will take less than 5 minutes to complete. 

4. If the installation were successful,  it would open up a login page. Enter the email address and password you used to register for the product. 
5. If you enter them correctly, you will be redirected to its dashboard.

To uninstall the software, you can go to the windows start menu, locate the Norton icon, right-click on it and click on the uninstall option.

Pricing and Packages

Norton Currently has three subscription plans:

• Antivirus Plus
• Antivirus Standard
• Norton 360 Deluxe
• Norton 360 With LifeLock Select
• Norton 360 With LifeLock Ultimate Plus
• Norton 360 For Gamers

The following table shows you the annual rates of each plan.

Keep in mind that the above prices are only applicable to the first year. This means that Norton will automatically renew their prices at the regular monthly or annual rate from the second year onwards unless you update or cancel the plan. Norton will notify you via email about the renewal before 30 days. All the plans have the following features. 

• Online protection
• Anti-Spyware, Antivirus, Malware, and Ransomware Protection
• Password Manager
• Smart Firewall
• Cloud Backup
• 24/7 customer support. 
• 7-days free trial

Let’s quickly look at the subscription plans to see which option best suits your needs. 

Norton Antivirus Free Plan

Currently, Norton does not offer a free subscription plan. But, it provides a 7-day free trial with all of their packages, and they offer huge discounts with all three plans. 

Norton Antivirus Plus 

If you just want to protect one device, then the Norton AntiVirus Plus is the best choice. This most basic plan of Norton costs you only 19.99$ for the first year and covers up to 1 PC or Mac. So this is not for you if you are looking to secure your PC, laptop, and mobile devices at once.

In contrast to other plans, it lacks useful features like SafeCam, Parental Control, Identity theft monitoring, and dark web monitoring. Therefore, it is not a good option if you have a family with kids and provide online protection and control. Also, it provides you with only 2GB of cloud storage for backup, which is a lot less than what  Deluxe and LifeLock plans offer. 

Norton 360 Standard

Norton 360 Standard is similar to the basic plan, but it is available only in some regions. It costs $39.99 for the first year and includes all the basic plan features plus the Secure VPN, PC SafeCam, and offers PC cloud backup of up to 10GB. Although it is the most basic plan for some regions, based on our experience using it, we can say its features are more than enough to safeguard your PC against all types of viruses and malware. 

Norton 360 Deluxe

Apart from the features listed above, Norton 360 Deluxe provides the following features.

• Parental Control
• School Time
• Secure VPN
• Privacy Monitor
• PC SafeCam
• Dark Web Monitoring

Therefore, for only $49.99 for the first year, this plan seems to be more valuable than its most basic subscription plan. It provides the flexibility to support protection for up to 5 PCs, Macs, smartphones, or tablets. Therefore, it is a good choice for families with kids or to protect more than one device at once. 

You also get a free secure VPN to browse the internet anonymously. This plan offers 50 GB of PC Cloud Backup, which means you can protect more data than in its basic plan. In addition to that, PC SafeCam and Dark Web Monitoring are two additional useful features you get with this plan.   

Norton 360 With LifeLock Select 

Norton LifeLock Select plan includes all the features of Norton 360 Deluxe and the following additional cool and interesting features.

• LifeLock Identity Alert System
• Assign a US-based Identity Restoration Specialist
• Stolen Wallet Protection
• Million Dollar Protection Package
• Credit Monitoring
• SSN and Credit Alerts
• ID verification and Monitoring
• Data Breach Notifications

Apart from the above feature, this plan offers you protection for upto 5 PCs, Macs, smartphones, or tablets and 50 GB of PC Cloud Backup. If you are very much concerned about your online privacy, this plan will be a good investment because of the additional security and privacy features it provides. It means you will have easy access to the required people to help you in case of any data breach or financial theft.

Norton 360 With LifeLock Ultimate Plus (US Only)

This is the most comprehensive hence the most expensive plan of Norton antivirus. If you have many valuable assets that could be exposed to cyber threats, have a large number of machines to protect, and are concerned too much about online privacy and security, then this plan will be the best option. 

It offers all the features of Norton 360 With LifeLock Select Plan and the following additional features.

• Identity Lock
• Phone Take Over Monitoring
• Bank and Credit Card Activity Alerts
• Fictitious Identity Monitoring
• Court Record Scanning
• 401(k) and Investment Activity Alerts
• Home Title Monitoring

Apart from the above feature, this plan offers you protection for an unlimited number of PCs, Macs, smartphones, or tablets and 5000 GB of PC Cloud Backup.

Norton 360 For Gamers

Let’s see how Norton fares for the gamers. Norton 360 for Gamers offers all of the features in Norton 360 Deluxe and some extra features, including a game booster (Norton GO). Norton GO can automatically detect games and feed them the maximum power to optimize games processing. It comes with a 6-day money-back guarantee with an annual subscription. It provides the flexibility to support protection for upto 3 PCs, Macs, smartphones, or tablets and 50 GB of PC Cloud Backup.

So after reviewing the plans and their features, we can say that Nortons’ subscription plans provide value for money because even the basic plan supports a decent level of protection. There are several plans; thus, you have the flexibility to choose the best option according to your requirements. 

Therefore, Based on the subscription plans and their features, we give Norton 5 out of 5 stars.

Customer Support

Norton provides live chat support with their chatbot to answer many general questions like upgrading the subscription, account-related inquiries, etc. Our experience with their live chat support was quite good. 

In case you need to contact their staff, a 24/7 helpline is also available. Moreover, we were able to find the following online support features on their customer support page.

• A comprehensive set of FAQs available in their help center
• Articles for various topics
• Quick Help for popular solutions
• Norton Forum
• Community Support

When you first arrive at the Customer Support page, there are a lot of helpful articles for you to refer to and solve the problem on your own. The FAQs are comprehensive and well-organized, and you can also search and find the help topic you need. But there is no email support option, but it doesn’t seem like a disadvantage because live chat or call is the most sought-after option by many users.

Overall, we think  Nortons’ Customer support is excellent because it includes essential support options like live chat support and a comprehensive knowledge base. Therefore, we give a rating of 5 for the customer support part.

Our Verdict

Based on all the testing we did for all the above areas we discussed, we think Norton is an excellent antivirus software worth its prices and the features they offer. We saw the actual use of its tools during our tests like passwords manager, Secure VPN, Backup tool, and Safe Browser Extensions.

Despite all the positive sides, there is still some room for improvement, for example, its UI navigation and the VPN features.

FAQ