Catching up to Tesla: you can now unlock and start your Polestar 3 with an Apple Watch - Related to catching, heart, eset, polestar, lets

Catching up to Tesla: you can now unlock and start your Polestar 3 with an Apple Watch

Polestar 3 just got a big Apple Watch upgrade.

It now supports car keys in Apple Wallet.

You can unlock and drive your car with just an iPhone or your Apple Watch.

Polestar has presented a big upgrade for iPhone and Apple Watch consumers that will allow drivers of its Polestar 3 to unlock and drive the vehicle thanks to car keys in Apple Wallet.

The firm revealed that it was pushing an over-the-air software upgrade to the Polestar 3. Car keys in Apple Wallet support now means that drivers can automatically unlock their cars while leaving their iPhones in their pocket, simply by wearing an Apple Watch.

It's a big benefit that allows seamless, keyless entry to (and exit from) your vehicle. What's more, clients benefit from Apple Wallet's car keys sharing, so you can share keys through Messages, Mail, AirDrop, WhatsApp, and more with up to five other individuals, tweaking access between just gaining access to the vehicle or driving it as required. You can even use the iPhone Power Reserve feature to unlock and drive the car if your iPhone has run out of battery.

This is a welcome quality-of-life upgrade for Polestar 3 owners, and the enterprise has confirmed the Polestar 4 should get support soon too. What's more, you don't even need the best Apple Watch or newest iPhone to take advantage, you just need an iPhone 11 or Apple Watch Series 6 or later.

It's also a welcome catch-up play for anyone casting a jealous eye over at Tesla. Tesla supports Apple Wallet car keys and also unveiled a new bespoke Apple Watch app for Tesla owners late last year. The latter lets consumers remotely lock and unlock their vehicle, adjust climate controls, and even open the front trunk.

While niche, Apple Wallet car keys is one of the coolest Apple Watch capabilities going. The device's Wallet app and NFC tools can also be used to unlock the best smart locks for your home, access hotel rooms, and of course, make payments using Apple Pay.

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Edge browser now lets you limit how much RAM it's allowed to use

Microsoft's browser provides a fast, secure, and modern web experience. Browse the web anywhere with one seamless experience from your phone to your computer and other signed-in devices. Microsoft Edge is also a safe browser that gives you the tools to protect your privacy and security online.

Microsoft Edge offers enhanced privacy, resource management, and integration with Microsoft services. Chrome dominates with extensions, cross-platform compatibility, and user base. Personal preference plays a role.

Yes, Microsoft Edge lets you block all the autoplay media by heading to edge://settings/content/mediaAutoplay and selecting "Block" from the drop-down menu. You can also add exceptions to websites using the "Add" tool in site permissions.

Why is Edge a Microsoft browser you should actually use?

Microsoft Edge is a well rounded browser based on Chromium with four key advantages:

It offers solid integration with Windows and other Microsoft services, which allows for more direct communications between programs and thus a more fluent workflow.

Performance and battery savings are improved upon Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.

You can access all Chrome extensions giving you a world of options to customize the browser.

It adds enhanced privacy settings and track prevention measures that give you control over almost all aspects of the information you share. Microsoft promises that while using InPrivate tabs, your browsing and search data aren't saved on your device and any data collected will not be tied with your Microsoft account.

Making the web a advanced place for everyone.

We've adopted the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge to create superior web compatibility for our clients, and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers.

We've also started making contributions back to Chromium in areas like accessibility, touch, ARM64 and others. Our plan is to continue working in Chromium rather than creating a parallel project. We're working directly with the teams at Google, and we're looking forward to working even more with the open source community. To learn more about our contributions, see our Microsoft Edge "Explainers" on GitHub and check out our source code release.

The Microsoft Edge team wants to hear from you. In December we asked visitors to this site "if you could change one thing about the web, what would it be?". We've read your answers and have some thoughts to share. Head over to the Microsoft Edge Insider Forum to see what the community is saying about this and other topics.

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Expanding Microsoft Edge Game Assist (Preview) to Edge Stable.

We revealed the release of Microsoft Edge Game Assist (Preview) just before the holidays, and we've been thrilled by the response from players. Today, we're excited to share that we're expanding the preview of Game Assist to Edge Stable, making it even easier for players to try it without installing special software or changing your default browser. We're also excited to share some of the latest changes we've made based on your feedback.

Game Assist (Preview) arrives in the Stable channel.

For technical reasons, the initial preview of Game Assist required you to install Edge Beta 132 and set it as your default browser. With the release of Edge Stable 132, Game Assist is available without any Insider software or needing to change your default browser, making it even easier to use on your gaming PC.

To opt-into Game Assist (Preview), open Edge, go to Settings and more ("…") > Settings, search for Game Assist in the search box, find the Game Assist option, and select Install widget. It's that easy. From now on, you can access Game Assist (Preview) at any time by opening Game Bar with Win+G.

If you're already using Game Assist, you don't have to change anything. Going forward Game Assist will use Edge Stable by default, but for the latest and greatest updates you can set it to use Edge Beta, Dev, or Canary instead. To do this, simply set the channel you'd like to use as your default browser and restart Game Assist.

Fixed an issue that caused deployed pinned Shortcuts to the Taskbar to be duplicated.

Improved user experience for Purview copy/paste controls in Edge. Our Purview cut/copy/paste experience is now more user friendly with self-dismissing dialogs on successful paste. The existing "Paste to supported browsers" setting allows organizations to classify and protect the content that end clients can paste – both to specific websites and through supported browsers. You can follow the instructions in Use Endpoint data loss prevention (DLP) to create the DLP policy.

New Workspaces color display: browser window outline. Workspaces each have a dedicated color, and that color is now displayed as an outline on the browser window. The previous experience applied the color across the entire tab strip in horizontal tab orientation, and across the title bar in vertical tab orientation. Note: This feature is a controlled feature rollout. If you don't see this feature, check back as we continue our rollout.

Full Favorites Bar available in Workspaces. Workspaces now display a user's full set of favorites in the Favorites Bar, with a dedicated workspace folder accessible from the bar. The previous experience replaced the Favorites Bar with the workspace favorites folder. Note: This feature is a controlled feature rollout. If you don't see this feature, check back as we continue our rollout.

In this article, we'll share a few key improvements that we've lately made to Microsoft Edge and to the web platform, which we're very excited about:

Writing with digital pens directly on web pages.

Building text editors that support advanced text-editing surfaces.

And controlling text prediction functions.

You can change the tone, format, or length settings to your needs.

Being able to access Copilot directly within input fields can save time and avoid context switching. But we also realize that not all text editable surfaces on the web need this capability, so we're also introducing the writing suggestions HTML attribute to disable it. More on this attribute at the end of this article.

Write in any text field with a digital pen.

Windows Ink allows you to write with a digital pen directly into an input field on Windows touch devices. This helps you stay in your workflow by reducing the need to switch back and forth between your keyboard and digital pen.

Microsoft Edge now also supports Windows Ink in places such as text area elements, input elements, elements with the content editable attribute, or the browser address bar.

With Windows Ink support in Microsoft Edge, you can:

Enter text by writing with a pen in, or near an input field.

Delete text by scribbling over words to delete them.

Add or remove spaces by drawing vertical lines in the text.

Add line breaks by drawing horizontal lines.

Windows Ink can save a lot of time when interacting with webpages with a digital pen, and we would love to hear what you think and how we can improve the feature. Note that you can toggle the feature in Microsoft Edge by going to edge://settings/content/HandwritingToText in a browser window.

Build rich text editors that support advanced input methods.

Today's text editing techniques on the web make it hard to truly decouple the text input logic from the text rendering logic. Custom text editors often must use a hidden element that uses the contenteditable attribute to capture text input events, and then render the text separately, which often comes with accessibility issues.

To help with this, we shipped the EditContext API in Chromium to make it possible to create custom web text editors that support advanced input methods and avoid hacky solutions. The API is available in Microsoft Edge starting with 121, and in other Chromium-based browsers.

With the EditContext API, web developers can receive text input events directly through the API surface, which removes unnecessary complexity in the code, enhances accessibility, and lets developers create their own custom view of the edited text. For example, you can use the API to render the edited text in a element if you want.

The API supports text-editing UI surfaces that a user might be composing text with at the operating system level, such as IME composition dialogs. It even supports Windows Ink.

Text editing webapps often encounter clipboard issues when copying and pasting HTML formatted content. Sometimes, the format is lost, other times, the clipboard payload is much more complicated than it should.

To address this, we introduced the unsanitized option to the [website] method, allowing web applications to choose when they want to receive the full HTML content, rather than a browser-sanitized version of the HTML.

To learn more about how to use the option, check out the Clipboard read() method documentation on MDN.

This API has already helped us improve Excel Online by addressing several top copy-paste issues affecting the app. We shipped the API in Chromium, making it available to all Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge starting with version 122.

When writing data to the system clipboard, by using the Clipboard API, web developers have no way of knowing if the data they're trying to write is supported. This means that they must first attempt to write the data to the clipboard and then check whether the write operation failed due to an unsupported data format.

This leads to more complex code and unnecessary cost in terms of CPU cycles.

To fix this, we've added a new static method to the ClipboardItem interface called supports(), which makes it possible to detect supported clipboard formats before attempting to write data. For example, to test if the text/html mime-type is supported, use ClipboardItem.supports("text/html").

Control the browser's text prediction feature.

As mentioned before, Microsoft Edge lets you rewrite text with the inline Compose feature. Edge can also predict text as you type, with the text prediction feature. Text prediction makes writing much faster by completing sentences.

However, we realize that not all text editing surfaces on the web want the text prediction or inline Compose functions available at all times. So, starting with version 124, we're introducing a new HTML attribute called writingsuggestions. The new attribute can be used to turn off text prediction and inline Compose on any editor element. To learn more, check out our explainer document, and the attribute's specification.

The new writingsuggestions attribute is now part of the Chromium codebase, making it available to all Chromium-based browsers. However, because Microsoft Edge is currently the only browser to have access to these text prediction and rewriting capabilities, the attribute doesn't have any effect in other browsers.

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ESET Home Security Premium review: Simple protection with a complex heart

At a Glance Expert's Rating Pros Clean interface.

Advanced settings Cons Parental controls have limited utility.

Unclear pricing Our Verdict ESET Home Security Premium may have changed its name, but not its character. It still offers good antivirus protection, along with useful tools like a password manager and PC utilities. Power consumers will most appreciate this security suite for its advanced settings, which give more control under the hood. However, parents may need a more robust set of tools for monitoring their kids’ activity. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today.

When we last reviewed ESET Home Security Premium, it had a different name. Officially it did, anyway. Despite the upgrade, the antivirus suite formerly known as ESET Smart Security Premium is still called the very same in the app—and has kept its fundamentals, too.

Those core qualities start with good threat protection and an easy-to-use password manager. They include enough advanced settings to potentially satisfy power people, too. In fact, if you like your apps to have less handholding and more digging around, ESET could be perfect for you…so long as you can forgive some elements for not living up to their hype.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best antivirus software for Windows to learn about competing products.

What does ESET Home Security Premium include?

As with other security suites, ESET Home Security Premium’s antivirus and firewall serve as the key fundamentals of the app. Together, they shield your PC from malware (including ransomware), suspicious websites and downloads, and potential network attacks. The software also can scan for vulnerable networks, thwart unauthorized use of your webcam, and block dangerous email attachments. Parental controls and a password manager are available, too.

However, unlike similarly priced rivals, Home Security Premium is more sparse with its ancillary protections. You get safeguards for browsing sessions (like for banking) and a data encryption tool, as well as an anti-theft feature to help locate lost or stolen devices. No identity protections (like dark web scanning) come with the Home Security Premium plan — you must upgrade to Ultimate to get those.

Instead ESET’s mid-tier plan leans more heavily toward PC utilities. These focus on Windows performance — they monitor system changes, provide information on active Windows processes and network connections, help troubleshoot Windows issues, and check what devices are connected to your network.

Among ESET’s plans for home individuals, Home Security Premium is the mid-tier option. ESET.

How much does ESET Home Security Premium cost?

When you buy a subscription directly through ESET, you can cover the exact number of devices you want (up to 10). The price starts at $60 for just one device, then increases in $5 increments. Covered devices must run Windows, macOS, or Android — iOS is not supported.

Licenses purchased through ESET come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and are automatically enrolled in auto-renewal. You can stack together the firm’s 30-day free trial with the return policy.

ESET’s prices are the subscriptions’ list cost, but the business also caveats them as for “the first term only.” In other words, don’t expect to get a rate lock on what you pay. customers will receive information for the next year’s subscription cost only 30 days before renewal; any price increases are communicated then.

For a discount, ESET offers 15 percent off when signing up for a two-year term, and 20 percent off when signing up for a three-year term.

Further reading: How to get antivirus for cheap.

Key attributes of ESET Home Security Premium.

In dark mode, the interface is mostly gray with black tiles and green status bar (if all’s well on your PC). A set of seven tabs on the left let you jump to the dashboard, start a scan, enhancement ESET Home Security Premium, use the app’s tools, dive into settings, get help, or go to the web portal for additional settings and capabilities. The app can be resized to fit your window (or any dimension you want) — a rarity among antivirus software.

Tabs vary in their feature density. Computer Scan has just three options: scanning the local disks on your PC, starting an advanced scan (which includes a custom option), or dragging and dropping files to check them out. Scan-related notifications appear in this window as well.

Meanwhile, Tools and Setup are more dense. aspects appear as text entries sorted into groups, rather than as tiles. Advanced settings (called Advanced setup) are a maze of toggle switches, too. Power customers will enjoy the control, but customers who want a simple experience will likely get lost among the options — explanations. The vibe is that of a home wired for its own server room: You first see just the installed ethernet wall ports and perhaps a piece of networking equipment, but if you’re willing to look, a complex setup lives inside a cramped closet down the hall.

In addition to the desktop app, ESET Home Security Premium ties into the firm’s web portal, which you’ll use to manage your account and password manager individuals. The anti-theft tools live here too, as do the parental control activity logs for your children’s devices.

ESET Home Security Premium scans continuously for real-time threats on your PC and when you’re online. It checks files on your local hard drive and any removable media for malware and spam, including email downloaded to Windows Mail, Microsoft Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird. The software also monitors webpages for dangerous files and phishing attempts, as well as suspicious network activity going to and from the internet.

Unlike similar rival plans, ESET Home Security Premium doesn’t let you limit app access to the internet or specific files as extra protection. It only automatically screens for unusual behavior. And as mentioned above, the Home Security Premium subscription doesn’t include data breach tracking, either — you must step up to the Ultimate tier for identity protections.

Right after installation, ESET performs an initial full-system scan. Its settings also include a system startup file check as part of the default scheduled tasks. However, the app primarily relies on real-time scanning as the primary method of catching threats. You must create your own scheduled scans to proactively screen your system.

The first screen you’ll see when creating a scheduled scan in the Scheduler tool. PCWorld.

Next, you’ll select the scan depth — a smart scan, context menu scan, in-depth scan, or computer scan. Smart scans skip files previously marked as clean and not since modified. Context menu scans trigger a user-defined scanning profile when checking a file or folder using the Windows context menu. In-depth scans dig into every file on your system, regardless of previous scan results. Computer scans automatically choose your PC’s local drives to scan.

The parts of your PC that can be scanned (including hidden areas) change with the default scan option chosen — and you can pick exactly where to probe. If you want to create a scan that only checks places like the operating memory, boot sectors/UEFI, WMI database, or system registry, that’s possible. So is checking only a network location, a local drive or set of folders, or a combination of all areas.

Still not enough granularity? You can dig into ESET Home Security Premium’s Advanced Setup — if you want to tinker with how aggressive the scans are, you can.

For manual scans, you can only choose between a computer scan (examines the local drives on your PC), a custom scan (lets you select scan depth and the areas checked), a removable media scan, or repeating the last scan. You can also drag and drop folders or files into the window to scan them.

Related, you can also submit files of unknown or dubious origin through the app to the ESET labs for further analysis.

ESET replaces Windows’ built-in firewall with its own defenses, taking over the screening of all your PC’s inbound and outbound traffic. While simpler than Windows’ multiple interfaces for settings, you’ll have to dive into Home Security Premium’s advanced setup to change the firewall rules.

If that sounds like your idea of a good time (no sarcasm), you can get quite granular with custom rules. But for typical clients of third-party antivirus software, the ESET defaults should be sufficient.

The anti-theft tool is designed to locate a stolen device. On PC, the app will take several steps if marked as stolen in the ESET web portal — it will grab screenshots of the screen and take photos through the webcam, as well as location info. You can also set up a “phantom” account, which becomes the only active account when someone filches your PC, as well as review activity logs.

Actually, my Windows account is not protected with a password… PCWorld.

In practice, this tool isn’t as effective as you’d hope. A webcam can be covered with tape, for starters. The phantom account is useless if your Windows accounts aren’t secured with passwords. While that’s harder to do nowadays in Windows 11, it’s not impossible. ESET’s app can’t accurately tell when a Windows account isn’t password protected, either—and so you don’t get the warning you should. On a local Windows account with set up with a blank password field, ESET still counted the account as secured. (Tapping the enter key to log in is not secure, for the record.) The app also couldn’t always capture the IP address of the test PC — and IP addresses aren’t always an accurate reflection of someone’s true location.

ESET promotes its free Browser Privacy & Security extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge as an additional way to stay safe online — you can use it to get visual badges for good search results, clean up your browsing history, and wipe metadata from images you upload.

But on one PC, I couldn’t get the extension to behave properly in Chrome — a possible conflict with an already-installed ad-blocker extension. It couldn’t connect with ESET’s servers. The same extension worked fine on the test PC used to review the app within Edge, however.

ESET Home Security Premium includes parental controls — both for computers and Android phones. On a PC, you can configure Windows accounts separately, so that your child logging into their account won’t have the same full access to websites as a parent account. The filtering settings adjust based on age group (under 12, 12 to 17, and 18+). You can also change what types of websites are screened and add exceptions to either a block or allow list.

Some categories don’t make immediate sense — the help pages online don’t give a detailed explanation of what the less immediately obvious mean. When asked, ESET graciously explained several (“Dynamic” means websites that redirect to other sites or pages, for example), but clearer documentation would be superior.

Some categories aren’t immediately obvious as to what they screen. PCWorld.

Website blocking works well. In fact, you could argue it works a little too well — when I attempted to allow certain websites within a forbidden category during testing, the app wouldn’t let them through. The opposite works, though. You can ban specific sites when the overall category is allowed.

Geolocation tracking never quite worked properly for the child account used for testing, either. The Android phone’s location often wouldn’t show properly, and in a whole separate ESET account, never showed up at all. This feature seems best suited for website filtering and activity monitoring.

ESET Password Manager is straightforward and effective — a good starter password manager, if you haven’t yet started using one. Though it doesn’t offer many extras, the basics are covered in a polished interface.

You’ll install the browser extension on PC or download the app for Android, then create a separate account than the one that controls the antivirus app. Be sure to save the recovery key generated during setup — if you forget your password, it’s the only way to get back into your account.

The extension fills in and captures passwords seamlessly, immediately recognizing login forms and even password reset fields. You can create entries for accounts, identities, notes, and credit cards, with notes the best option for simple entries like Wi-Fi passwords. (Account entries require all fields, including username, be filled out.) ESET also lets you store and generate two-factor software tokens for accounts — which isn’t the strongest security move, but if it helps you use 2FA, it’s still the superior choice than not at all.

ESET Password Manager instantly recognized the password fields for this reset page and offered a suggestion. PCWorld.

ESET Home Security Premium includes several tools meant to help you keep tabs on your PC — -top shape.

System Cleaner looks for any changes to your system settings and appearance from the defaults. Running Processes and Network Connections let you know what apps and processes are active on your PC, and which have used your internet connection. Network Inspector lists the devices linked to your router. SysInspector identifies potential issues with your system, including outdated drivers, broken registry entries, and hardware incompatibilities. Device Control can limit access for devices attached to your PC, like a removable drive, CD/DVD drive, or printer. And Secure Data creates encrypted virtual drives or encrypted folders on removable media.

Secure Data makes creating a secure virtual drive on your PC, or adding an encrypted folder to a removable drive very simple. PCWorld.

Of the set, Network Inspector has less usefulness. I liked how it put the discovered devices in a list form along with IP address and last connection time, but some routers do this too, and with full accuracy for what’s connected. Network Inspector doesn’t always see every device, either.

System Cleaner can be handy for seeing what’s changed when troubleshooting, but its suggestions for reversions or mitigations don’t always work — and sometimes seem untrustworthy. (Why is a system appearance change flagged in red?).

Meanwhile, Running Processes, Network Connections, and SysInspector can also be useful for troubleshooting purposes, or just general understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes with your PC. Device Control and Secure Data also worked as advertised when tested. ESET says Secure Data uses 256-bit AES encryption. (Note: I did not verify that the encryption is implemented correctly, so keep that in mind if using this feature to store sensitive data.).

ESET offers twin features that lock down potentially sensitive data transmitted to and from your web browser. The first is Safe Banking & Browsing, which ESET says relies on a driver to filter keyboard inputs and scramble them so a keylogger can’t capture them with accuracy. The other is Secured Browsing, in which the ESET antivirus engine screens for any processes that might try to interfere with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox’s normal operation.

Chrome running in ESET Home Security Premium’s secured browser mode. Note the thin, bright green line around the edge of the window. PCWorld.

No visual indicator exists for the safe banking and browsing mode being active. However, you will see a thin, bright green border when the secure mode for browsing is on…and when it’s off, too. This seeming bug happens if you turn off the Secure all browsers option, but leave the secured browser settings still on. I ended up ignoring this feature while testing, and still stuck with my normal best practices for browsing online. (That is, verifying a link is on a secure https connection, navigating directly to a website, using two-factor authentication where possible, downloading files from only reputable findings, and not plugging in unknown USB devices into my PC.).

When evaluated by top security research organizations, ESET performs relatively well. In AV-Test’s zero-day attack and malware tests for November and December 2024 (the most current results released), the software’s antivirus engine caught 100 percent of the 389 zero-day malware samples. For widespread and prevalent malware, it caught 100 percent of the 12,159 samples.

AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for July through October 2024. AV-Comparatives.

In AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection test for July through October 2024, ESET came in near the top of the pack. It blocked [website] percent of the 471 samples comprised of exploits (like drive-by downloads), malicious web addresses, and URLs linking directly to malware, while only flagging three false positives. Meanwhile, in AV-Comparatives’ September 2024 malware protection test, it had a 88 percent offline detection rate, [website] percent online detection rate, and [website] online protection rate. These results indicate generally strong defenses, though weaker when not connected to the internet, with an overall protection rate that ranks among the top.

When evaluated for its ability to handle more sophisticated threats like malicious scripts and fileless attacks, ESET had the top score. It caught 14 of 15 test cases in AV-Comparatives’ October 2024 Advanced Threat Protection Test.

We expect ESET Home Security Premium to have minimal impact on system resources when idle in the background — at least during everyday tasks. After running PCMark 10’s Extended benchmark, which simulates web browsing, video chatting, gaming, and image and document editing in free, open-source apps, the scores were the same as before installing the software.

Home Security Premium had light impact during our other two benchmarks, UL Procyon’s Office Productivity, and our Handbrake encoding test. Procyon focuses on Microsoft Office use — [website], Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Handbrake lets us crunch a big uncompressed video file into a smaller version. In both benchmarks, ESET hanging out in the background only reduced scores by about 1 to 2 percent.

AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for September 2024. AV-Comparatives.

As for its effect on your PC, ESET Home Security Premium should have minimal impact on system resources when idling in the background, especially during everyday tasks. After running PCMark 10’s Extended benchmark, which simulates web browsing, video chatting, gaming, and image and document editing in free, open-source apps, the scores were the same as before installing the software.

We also saw a light impact during our other two benchmarks, UL Procyon’s Office Productivity and our Handbrake encoding test. The Procyon benchmark focuses on Microsoft Office use — [website], Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Most antivirus software tends to kick into higher gear when Office apps are active, since Word and Excel files can spread malware. Installing ESET caused a small decline in Procyon scores, with a 3 percent decrease. It had a smaller effect on Handbrake, with a tiny dip of just under 2 percent.

Even with a full system scan running in the background, ESET didn’t hit our test PC as hard as rivals have. In PCMark 10, scores drifted down by less than 3 percent. Even in Procyon and Handbrake, where scores can plummet when antivirus software runs full blast, the benchmark results dropped by a relatively modest 12 percent. Rivals like Avast, Norton, and McAfee have shown score degradation of up to 41 percent.

(Curious about how we test? You can get further details in our overview of our review process.).

In the real world, you can expect ESET to play nicer with older or slower computers — like our test PC, which is a budget laptop. And you’ll see even less effect if you schedule full scans for off-hours (like when you’re asleep). Same goes if you run smart scans on a PC where you don’t often change or add files, since that type of scan skips over unchanged files marked clean in a previous pass.

Should you buy ESET Home Premium Security?

Ideally, an antivirus suite’s functions should perform well across the board. But despite ESET Home Security Premium’s inconsistencies, this software delivers on its fundamentals, as well as goes easier on system resources. Power people in particular can get a lot out of this suite — provided they don’t need a well-rounded set of parental controls. Less technical people may benefit from a simpler app, though.

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