Kaspersky 2014 & Eset AV 7 review - Clear winner!

tankman1989

tankman1989

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I needed to update my AV so I thought I would look at the top ranking AV's. I had Eset last year and it was great. I decided to move to the security suite (mistake) and now am going to move back to the stand alone AV.

So, I installed Kaspersky stand alone AV and not only was it horribly slow to use, the UI was just horribly simple, meaning that it lacked advanced options that I am used to to better refine my scanning & protection. I looked for an "advanced" option but failed in finding it (may be there but I'm at a loose when looking). Not only did it not have enough options for scanning & general protection, when it did scan it was horribly slow and failed at almost every attempt to remove threats. The UI relies on the back arrow button to manuver through the menu instead of having a stationary menu to select from - it seemed very cumbersome.

I then installed Eset AV 7 and the install process was much smoother and faster than Kaspersky (69MB vs 240MB!). Update process was great (although definition updates seemed to download slowly - happened on 3 installs I tried) and went smoothly. The UI is intuitive and simple enough for the average user and has enough options for an advanced user. I would like to see a more advanced UI (even if we just select the "advanced" option to get there) for tech work. I'm not a fan of the ultra simplistic UI that relies on default settings to do everything. Detection & removal were much better than Kaspersky and scan times were much faster from what I could see.

All in all, I would have to say Eset won hands down. I really have to question where Kaspersky went wrong this last year or two as they had an amazing product a couple years ago. I don't know why companies choose to mess with a successful product as it never seems to work in their favor. My only thought is that with the success comes more users, many whom may not be as tech savvy so they get requests for a more simple UI and then we get the crap we end up with. Anyone else think that might be why or have any ideas of why these AV programs tend to trend as they do and change so often?
 
If someone focuses on performance,
ESET NOD32 is better than Kaspersky.

If someone focuses on protection,
Kaspersky is better than ESET NOD32.

-For New Rings: Kaspersky
-For Old Rings: ESET NOD32

 
I love 'em both.....agree that Kas has the edge on protection, and agree that Eset has the edge on performance in recent years (they were brutally have in the version 3 years...I've been a reseller since version 2.5 days).
My source is over a decade with both, many many installations of both. But for the best antivirus testing source..check av-comparatives.org
 
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I'm seeing way too many Eset machines coming in with infections so I am sticking to Kaspersky. Only on very slow XP machines I would put something like Avira because of less impact.
 
We recommend both Eset or Kaspersky to our customers, 99% of our customers select Eset when we tell them its simply faster than Kaspersky. We have only had one Eset machine come back in the past year with an infection and it was because the customer disabled Eset because it was preventing him from playing an online game.
 
Kaspersky and ESET both get my vote.

Kaspersky - Great protection, but still not 100%. Some rigs go slow, google drive issues, and not the best from my experience when it comes to a business network with a server on the performance side.

ESET - Great protection, but I'd like to have MBAM along side it. Like others said, its below Kaspersky in protection. It's lighter as well when compared to Kaspersky.

My vote is Kaspersky is great for a standalone system, and not a business network. For the regular consumer, I'd recommend Kaspersky over ESET. I also recommend MBAM. My regular consumers who are using Kaspersky with MBAM never complain much about performance, and viruses never come up that one or the other can't handle and remove for them.

If performance is clawing up the wall on you, see what they are running. Is it an older system? Push for an upgrade if you can. Newer systems with performance issues are usually because the system barely has the bare minimum specs. Something my clients are getting a lesson in with or without Kaspersky. "Whys it so slow? Whys it take for ever for my browser to load (non-IE users)?" When they realize they are using a sub-par i3 or worse processor, and barely 2GB of RAM from the bargain bin at Best Buy, they usually ask if I can either upgrade it or replace it.

For businesses, neither gets my vote. I prefer a light solution that works well with LOB software when you throw a server in to the mix. Bitdefender, Vipre, or Trend Micro (sometimes), along with MBAM for that little added piece.

For my business clients that aren't using a server, or worse a dedicated workstation, I recommend Bitdefender, Kaspersky and then Vipre. I also recommend MBAM regardless of their choice.
 
We've been an Eset reseller since V2.7 and never bothered with anything else since then. We've sold hundreds of Eset licenses in that time.
Before that we had tried AVG, Norton, Trend and McAfee but all were terrible.

We've never had a virus infection in all those years until just in the last few weeks.
A couple of workstations on two different client networks got hit with what appeared to be Cryptolocker. Neither of the workstations ever got the ransom warning screen, as Eset picked up the virus and removed it, but not before it had started encrypting files on their server shares.

We get so many machines in our workshop that are infected, all running a variety of different AV software, but not one with Eset on it has ever come in with an infection.
After we remove whatever AV was installed, and put Eset on, it starts picking up infections before it's even updated to the latest defs.
 
KIS 2014 isn't compatible with GFI a/v monitoring. Had this long support issue with them about it. In the end they asked if I wanted it added as a feature enhancement or something. I was like: really? :what:
 
cyabro said:
We get so many machines in our workshop that are infected, all running a variety of different AV software, but not one with Eset on it has ever come in with an infection.
After we remove whatever AV was installed, and put Eset on, it starts picking up infections before it's even updated to the latest defs.
Click to expand...

We were an Eset "Gold Partner" for many years (that means some SERIOUSLY high volume of sales..in the tens of thousands)...as much as I loved Eset back in the day, it ain't what it used to be, and we often do have to clean up infections of some of our clients that are still on Eset. Bonnie was just in our office a few months ago, she's the Senior channel manager for the US. We still do a decent amount of sales but since we've moving most of our clients to our N-Ables managed AV...our Eset sales have dropped us to Silver Partner status (hence why she came by our office...guess she got a feeling we're leaving Eset). Prior to her, Dave Singleton used to stop by every year or so to go out 'n have drinks w/us.

Work with enough infected machines and you'll see pretty much any AV product pickup items on a machine that the prior AV missed. Heck I've seen MSE pickup infections Eset missed many times. Most AV products are 92-97% effective...always missing a few %. Other AV products can overlap that few % missed...it's just luck of the draw.
 
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Thank you for the review. Since buying both ESET and Kaspersky I been using ESET on my personal machine for over a month now. I can say that ESET has been great especially alongside Malware Bytes.

ESET gets my vote.
 
Trying a trial of Kaspersky antivirus (more internet security) and like it ok. Seems to stay out of my way. Not to top heavy. Is there an advantage to their internet security package vs plain antivirus? On my personal box I did use avast but caught and removed a couple of backdoor trojans. So think it's time to look around.
 
Looks like N-Able is using Bitdefender.

I tried Bitdefender Free on a few systems and it really caused some odd problems (couldn't get to any website, Windows Explorer crashing). I understand they've fixed that, so I'll try again with a few test systems.

May have been an issue with just the free version.
 
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skdmaster said:
What virus engine is N-Able using?
Click to expand...

With the official release of version 9.3 in the past month, they switched from "EndPointSecurity" which was based on Panda (pretty good engine, one of the top 6 lately), to their new "Security Manager" product, which is based on BitDefender (one of the top 3 lately...actually won top AV product of last year at AV-C).
 
Honestly I find Kaspersky just over annoying at times. I also have a lot of consumers that complain about that. ESET coupled w/ MBAM Pro is a damn good solution. I beta tested ESET 7 w/ Malware Bytes Anti-Exploit on my torrent box & got no viruses what so ever on it.

I am using Kaspersky only because I have about 5 or 6 years worth of licenses right now that I got for free after rebates (ok so postage on them but 39 cents times 6 is still a good deal). It is still good protection but I find my self adding lots of exclusions & disabling some components of the AV.
 
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