Norton Utilities Ultimate review: Can it speed up your PC?

Remember how fast your PC’s performance was fresh out of the box? Norton Utilities Ultimate can get those speeds back and running like new, and it nails this with an easy-to-use app.

Norton’s PC cleaner and optimizer tool for Windows computers can help clear out junk files, find unwanted software needlessly taking up space, turn off programs slowing down your system and even clean up browser data.

Yes, it’s not impossible to get rid of unnecessary files and programs yourself, but a majority of PC users aren’t scouring through their system to sniff out useless junk. That stuff accumulates after downloading and updating apps over time, leaving your PC running sluggishly compared to when it first booted up.

Norton Utilities Ultimate makes the clean-up process simple and efficient. The renewal price after the first year is steep, and many users may only need one tidy-up session to be satisfied. Still, it’s hard to say no to letting your PC reach its full performance potential.

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Norton Utilities Ultimate price

Norton Utilities Ultimate costs $39.99 / £29.99 / NZ$39.99 for the first year and renews at $69.99 / £59.99 / NZ$69.99 every year after. It boosts up to 10 PCs per subscription so that you can clean up multiple Windows computers under one price.

First-year prices are great, as it works out to be around $3 / £2.50 per month. It’s the renewal price after the first year when the PC cleaner gets pricey, especially if you’re already happy with your computer’s performance after a few clean-ups.

To put this into perspective, similar PC cleaner tools such as Avast Cleanup and AVG TuneUp are priced at $69.99 per year for ten devices, while CCleaner Pro is $39.95 / £39.95 per year for three devices.

Norton Utilities Ultimate offers the best prices for the first year, especially for how many devices it can boost. After that, expect to pay costs slightly higher than its competition. It’s a good deal depending on the amount of devices you have.

Of course, free PC cleaners are available that do an exceptional job at optimizing your Windows PC’s performance. Still, they don’t have extra features such as automatic cleaning, browser data scrubbing, or an uninstaller simulator.

Overall, Norton Utilities Ultimate provides a good offer for those who require quality PC maintenance for multiple devices.

How Norton Utilities Ultimate runs

Norton provides an easy set-up process for Utilities Ultimate, and really, all you have to do is click a button to clean up any cobwebs your PC might have.

As soon as it boots up, Norton Utilities will quickly scan your system to find any issues. This includes junk files, available memory (RAM), potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) and more. In my case, the program found more than 650 issues on my PC. With a number like this, I’m expecting quite a boost.

The only option is to click “Activate now,” which will start the clean-up process. After punching in the activation key, you’ll see an overall look at your system’s status.

Norton states that my system status is poor, highlighting the different issues giving my PC a hard time. Click “Repair All”, and Utilities Ultimate will get to work, and it performs lickety-split to get stuff done.

It took just under 15 seconds to clear out junk files and make space for more memory, reducing issues to 214 and improving my system to a fair status. From there, it goes through other matters it can repair, such as registry issues with obsolete data references. Now, my system is in good condition with no problems found. It’s as easy as that.

The main dashboard also gives recommendations to boost your PC’s performance, including a startup optimiser that lets you choose what programs to enable when turning your computer on. This is great, as it provides a community choice of what others have chosen to turn off and lets you find out programs you didn’t know were running in the background.

There are also individual options to either clean, speed up, protect, recover and manage your system. These work the same way as the main clean-up tool, as all you need to do is click scan your system and click again to perform the tune-up. Of course, there are apps, files and programs you may not want to get rid of, so you can individually remove programs, too.

From the DriveScrubber that securely wipes all data from a drive to the RAM Reclaimer to maximise free memory by defragmenting system memory and the NetBooster to optimise basic internet settings, there are several useful options to tinker with to get your PC’s performance spick and span.

Norton Utilities Ultimate also offers Automatic Care, which, as you might expect, automatically analyses your system and repairs issues when you’re away from your PC. This includes cleaning out registry problems, eliminating unnecessary startup programs and defragmenting the system drive. Having all this done on the fly is a nice bonus, and configuring what clean-up duties it does is another excellent touch.

You can spend a bit of time going through the different tools Norton Utilities Ultimate offers to give your computer an extra edge, but at the end of the day, all it takes is a simple click, or two to get your PC back to the speeds it should have has all along.

Norton Utilities Ultimate test

I used Norton Utilities Ultimate on my Asus ROG Strix Scar 17, equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, 32GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. It can handle a lot of stress, meaning unnecessary files or apps will only slightly impact my PC’s performance. However, Norton’s clean-up tool still detected many issues, indicating my laptop had room to improve.

I ran a PCMark 10 test before and after activating the clean-up to see how much faster my PC performed. Initially, my device got an overall score of 5,979. Strangely, after downloading the antivirus, it scored 5,469. Clearly, the clean-up tool had an impact, but it needed to be in the right way.

I tried the test again and received a more suited score of 6,017. Here, we can see an improvement according to PCMark, but not by that much.

I also ran Window’s built-in diagnostics tool, Performance Monitor (Task Manager offers real-time system usage as well). It analyses your PC to check what process may impact your CPU, slowing down your computer. When I performed the test, it stated that Google Chrome was the top process group. To see if Norton Utilities Ultimate eased any pressure, I ran the clean-up tool and performed the test again.

This time, Google Chrome was no longer the top process group (instead, it was the Windows Management Instrumentation component). Memory utilization dropped from 56% to 26%, and network utilization dropped from 7% to 0%. Despite my considerably high-end PC, Norton Utilities Ultimate still found ways to improve its performance.

Verdict – Can Norton Utilities Ultimate make speed up my PC?

So, can Norton Utilities Ultimate speed up PCs?

Yes, and it can do it all in just a few clicks.

Norton’s PC cleaner may be on the pricey side for those who subscribe for more than a year, but its first-year offering, selection of advanced tune-up tools and simple-yet-effective user interface make it a fantastic option for anyone looking to give their computer a much-needed boost – and keep it that way.

Many users may not have ten devices in their household or require constant PC tune-ups, but that doesn’t take away from Norton Utilities Ultimate’s effectiveness for families or those needing their computer to perform at its best.

There are free PC cleaners around, but they will provide fewer handy features to keep your PC in prime condition. If you’re after an optimization tool so you no longer have to worry about junk files or programs clogging up your system, Norton Utilities Ultimate is a brilliant option to get.