German test lab AV-Test tested many virus scanners for Windows 10. The end result shows that there hardly is a difference in the actual detection rate of them nasty critters. AV-Test tested 18 different home user security products, 11 were rated at “Top Product”, surprizingly among it is Windows Defender (which is free).
An argument I hear a lot these days is that Windows Defender is fine for your protection, it's free in Windows 10 and saves you money to spend on other anti-virus software. But we all doubted a little as to how good it really is? Well, test-av proofs that it is more than sufficient. The security products were rated on protection, performance, and usability. An application could score 6 points for each test item, making the maximum achievable score 18 points as reported on myce;
Protection was tested by feeding the security products with 225 zero-day malware examples and nearly 5,600 malware examples that were discovered in the last four weeks before the tests. Zero-day malware is defined in this test as malware that has been discovered by AV-Test no later than within 24 hours before the test The average rate of detection of zero-day malware was 99.6%. Detection rate of the test where 5,600 malware examples that were discovered in the last four weeks were tested, was 100%. In total 13 security products achieved the maximum score of 6 points on the protection tests, 5 products scored 5.5 points. Windows Defender, the free built-in antivirus tool of Windows 10, achieved a detection rate of 100% in both tests and thus also scored the maximum 6 points.
"During May and June 2018 we continuously evaluated 18 home user security products using their default settings. We always used the most current publicly-available version of all products for the testing. They were allowed to update themselves at any time and query their in-the-cloud services. We focused on realistic test scenarios and challenged the products against real-world threats. Products had to demonstrate their capabilities using all components and protection layers."
Windows Defender Scores Nearly as good as any Anti Virus software