Virus protection for home users
Quick Heal Antivirus Pro is a security application developed by Quick Heal Technologies, one of India’s leading security software companies. This app provides the basic level of protection for the Windows platform, defending your device against malware, viruses, and other threats. It comes with various features, including a firewall, anti-keylogger, intrusion detector, and a sandbox, that it seems more like a suite rather than a standalone antivirus. Unlike other similar apps, it works on anything from Windows 2000 and up.
Problematic set up
Antivirus apps for Windows do not work well with Windows Defender, so you need to have it disabled. However, in Quick Heal Antivirus Pro’s case, it actually advises you to totally uninstall it rather than simply turning it off. As troubleshooting goes, this is useless. There is no way to uninstall Windows Defender completely, and trying to do so may cause more issues to your computer.
Installing the app is also quite problematic. But what’s a more pressing issue is that the app does not provide any error message whenever a problem arises in the setup. The installer will simply disappear with no logs to give you a clue. Contacting the support team will also prove to be useless, as you will only get generic troubleshooting advises—clear temporary folders, close other running apps, download, and run the installer again.
First-time users can activate the trial to receive free updates. However, in doing so, you need to provide way too much personal data, including your name, email, address, country, state, and city. What’s more questionable is that the app does not validate the information beyond the email address. So, even if you enter random digits as your contact number and choose a random location, the program won’t care.
Users will also find that the package consumed plenty of disk space at around 800MB, although it only adds three background processes. However, these packages are well-protected from malware, and that they cannot be deleted or otherwise compromised.
Lots of features, cluttered interface
One of the main selling points of Quick Heal Antivirus Pro is that it comes with a lot of features. As noted, it does not only comes with antivirus, but with firewall, anti-keylogger, sandbox, and intrusion detector as well. However, the app does not do well in cramming all of these in its window. The app’s interface is cluttered and not that intuitive.
It gives most space to large buttons highlighting four areas—files and folders, emails, internet and network, and external drives. More, these four areas do not give access to related functions. They only display settings that, once configured, you may never open again.
The scan button is at the bottom of the window, which, when clicked, gives access to three scan types: Memory, Full, and Custom. Note that there is actually no ability to add custom scan types or even tweak an individual scan type to behave differently. However, you can scan files from the explorer’s right-click menu. More, it can handle multiple simultaneous scans, so you can check a file even if you have a big system scan already running in the background.
Sub-par protection
Looking at its offerings, Quick Heal Antivirus Pro seems to be a worthy antivirus. However, as far as performance goes, it still has a long way to go if it wants to compete against top security suites such as Norton, Kaspersky, and Avast. For one, the scanning is a little slower than the average with some acceleration, here and there. It detects malware without difficulty, but it also generates several false alarms.
The firewall is also quite lacking. It is intelligent enough to whitelist common applications. However, it doesn’t have that much power or configurability, and it’s not easy to use. ZoneAlarm will give you more functionality for free. The browser security module is also sub-par. It works to a degree, but there are limits and sometimes causes problems with regular browser usage. Finally, its anti-keylogger may sound great in theory, but it does not block that many keyloggers.
Not particularly impressive
Quick Heal Antivirus Pro offers a lot of features that may entice users. However, none of them are particularly impressive. Its antivirus performs poorly as compared to other antivirus programs. At the end of the day, its power and functionality do not justify the price you need to pay to get this program.
