F-Secure Safe Antivirus for Mac is a mid-range security suite with an inflated price tag. In tests, F-Secure returned average scores in malware protection and also impact on system load. Find out more in our F-Secure Safe antivirus review for Mac review.
Click here to get F-Secure Safe for Mac.
Testing Explained
Testing Mac Antivirus software is a split into four major sections. The first test is a regular malware detection test. Next, we measure the load AV software puts on a Mac’s performance. This is followed by a false positives test to make sure non-harmful files aren’t flagged as dangerous. The test is concluded with a Potentially Unwanted Applications test – PUAs are apps with excessive advertising, messaging or privacy policies. See AV-Test.org for more.
Pricing
F-Secure Safe’s pricing is different to most other Mac Antivirus packages. With F-Secure Safe, you can’t buy a single license. It’s designed to work across all of your devices. Which means prices start at €59.90 (£52.25) for three devices for one year. The next tier costs €79.90 (£69.70) and buy you a license for five devices for 1 year. The top tier is for seven devices for one year and costs €99.90 (£87.14).
- 3 devices; 1 year: €59.90 (£52.25)
- 5 devices; 1 year: €79.90 (£69.70)
- 7 devices; 1 year: €99.90 (£87.14)
Protection & Performance
When you look F-Secure’s 2018 antivirus protection and performance scores, the product name “F-Secure” is ironically fitting. “F” is a suitable grade for its exam results. F-Secure was one of only a few Mac Antivirus suits to not achieve a 100% score. Detecting only 93.8% of threats.
It gets worse. F-Secure had a significantly negative impact on the system performance too. Adding 21 seconds (147/168 seconds) to the performance test – where 27.28 GB of files were copied to a Mac. This translates into a 13.3% load on the system. Things did improve slightly when it came to the download speed test. F-Secure Safe didn’t impact the downloading times at all. But it did miss 6.2% of threats.
If you’re looking for the Best Mac Antivirus that delivers the complete protections, F-Secure isn’t it. Check out our Norton Security for Mac review, instead. Norton returned a perfect malware detection score while having a nearly-undetectable impact on performance.
False Positives
The final test was for False Positives. This is when a Mac Antivirus package is exposed to a variety of files which are safe, but aren’t well known. If the AV software highlights any of these files as potential malware it’s deemed a false positive.
F-Secure performed well in this test. Posting a perfect score. F-Secure isn’t alone here. All nine Mac Antivirus suites also score 100% in this test.
Click here to get F-Secure Safe for Mac.
Verdict
There are three main things you need to know about F-Secure. The first is that it only detected 93.8% of threats. It added 13.3% to the System load. The cost of the cheapest package is more expensive than several other Mac Antivirus suits – all of which performed much better in tests.
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