Gridinsoft Anti-malware Review 2022 — Is It Any Good?

Gridinsoft Anti-malware © is a flagman product of Gridinsoft © company established in 2003 and headquartered in Ukraine.

When choosing anti-malware solutions, people must think a lot about what they choose. Antivirus is not a pack of cookies that will be eaten the next day – the licenses last at least half a year, and the majority of vendors make the most pleasant price for one or even 2-3 year licenses. Buying it, you have to pay a relatively big sum, and there is no guarantee that you will be able to get your money back. But which factors are the most important?

Choosing the antivirus: which elements arvpne the most important?

First of all, you must look at its ability to work in various circumstances. When the computer has several viruses that are active simultaneously, it cannot give you the best performance. Coin miners or adware can consume significant amounts of your CPU and RAM, so even launching the browser may be a problem. Meanwhile, almost all top-rated anti-malware software carries a ton of different functions that consume your hardware capacity.

Kaspersky Antivirus consumed a lot of CPU capacity while working in the background

Another important thing is the detection database quality and the heuristic engine. These systems are responsible for the correct malware detection in different situations. When performing the scan, the antivirus uses both detection databases and a heuristic engine, which increases the overall rate of detection quality. The proactive protection function – a very useful feature in antivirus software – is based almost entirely on the heuristic engine. However, the presence of last is not a panacea – a poorly designed heuristic module may show you a lot of false-positive detections.

The third thing is the price-to-functions balance. Many antivirus tools from famous vendors, such as Norton, Kaspersky, AVG, and others, offer you a huge functionality – VPN, parental control, data ciphering, keychain, anti-phishing protection, BIOS protection, and other things. The problem is that , not every user needs these things, but you have no choice and pay the full sum for functions you don’t need. Things like data ciphering and parental control are almost always ignored because there is no need. Isn’t it better to buy the antivirus with all basic functions for a reasonable price, without overpayments, and use other applications for the keychains mentioned above or VPN?

Is it possible to fit all requirements?

Such a task is pretty hard, especially when we remember that different categories of users need different functions. Offering something that can satisfy everyone is a prospective solution, but you may have to overpay for the functions you don’t need. Another side of the coin is low-end antiviruses, which have only basic functionality but also have a lot of problems with detection databases, false detections, performance, and other elements. You need to find a golden medium.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware seems to be that medium. But don’t think that this opinion is 100% paid and has no basis under itself – let me explain why this tool is worth your money and attention.

Performance and compatibility

GridinSoft Anti-Malware can be run on any Windows-based computers. This security tool supports Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10, and 11, so there will be no problems using it even on the most outdated machines. The performance of this application is pretty good, too – it consumes miserable amounts of RAM and CPU power, allowing you to use it even on heavily compromised systems.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware consumes tiny amounts of hardware capacities.

Another pleasant effect of the undemandingness of this program is that it can be run on cheap or obsolete desktops. Even if you have an ancient laptop with Windows 7 and 1GB RAM onboard, you will still be able to scan your system with no trouble. As tests on virtual machines show, it will take only about 15 minutes to check your device on the mentioned configuration. About the same time will be spent on the computer with Windows 10 onboard and 4GB ram/twin-core CPU.

Functionality and protection

As I have mentioned, perfect anti-malware software must contain only needed functions – nothing excessive. GridinSoft Anti-Malware is right in this case – it has only the most demanded things. On-Run Protection, which scans your system with a heuristic engine in the background, Online Protection, which prevents opening the phishing or untrustworthy sites, and Removable Device protection, which checks each USB drive for possible infections on it. Even these things may be set up to be enabled or disabled in the menu so that you may decrease the resources consumption even more.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware also shows significant flexibility in its settings. Besides the default setups available in the main tabs, you may also adjust a lot of internal parameters. Scan settings, heuristic engine usage, create the scan schedule, disable the reports sent to the developers – and it is not a full list. The program also has a quarantine list, which is beneficial if you are not sure about the detected item.

One of the key elements of each antivirus product is protection. What is the reason to keep the program with many functions if it does not protect you from viruses? GridinSoft Anti-Malware shows a very good detection rate for malware, having almost zero false detections. But even the top-tier antiviruses, like Kaspersky or Avira, are sometimes triggered on the legit elements, so is that the reason to complain?

Ease of use

The less time you need to understand how to use the program – the better it is designed. Some antivirus programs, even top-rated ones, have a complicated interface. But GridinSoft Anti-Malware shows a pretty clear interface, without any excessive elements. You can find all essential functions on the main screen, background functions – at one tab to the right.

Tools tab provides the ability to recover some of the system elements, such as browsers or HOSTS files, and also to see the quarantined files and get scanning logs. The last ones are often required when contacting support. Contacting technical support is also very easy – the button is always present in the program window, in the lower right corner. They are working pretty fast – I got an answer about 20 minutes after the request on my email.

Testing the detection quality

Malware is changing every day, so the best antivirus tool is one that can stop the most modern hazards. I have an archive with 25 samples of the latest ransomware variants. Let’s check out how GridinSoft Anti-Malware deals with it.

I have launched the custom scan, specifying the folder with malware as one that must be scanned. The custom scan is much faster than all others – it does not check your registry and ignores your system partition. It is pretty useful when you have downloaded a thing you are not sure about, but for system scanning, it is better to use Standard or Full Scan.

• All ransomware was detected successfully. Let’s see if it is able to remove it without any problems.
• To remove the viruses, you may press the “Clean Now” button, as well as choose the appropriate action for each virus.
• As you can see, GridinSoft Anti-Malware solved this task without any problem. The action took less than 3 minutes, so you will be able to check the suspicious archive or folder in no time.

Prices and terms

To test the program, you may take a 6-day free trial period. You need to specify your email and then check the inbox – the free trial key will be right there. The program does not lose its functionality within the trial period, so that you can deal with all malware for free.

There are three different types of licenses available for GridinSoft Anti-Malware. Here is the table:

Like anywhere else, the most extended license is the cheapest one in terms of price for a single month. The overall price rate is enjoyable – you can get an annual license for only $40. A family license that allows you to protect, for example, your PC, your son’s, and your wife’s laptops is a bit more expensive – $50 for the whole year. But it is still much cheaper than licenses of Norton or Kaspersky, for example – they are priced at $85 and $60 per annual license correspondingly.

Conclusion

GridinSoft Anti-Malware showed up to be a pretty effective and easy-to-use tool. Some will say that it lacks firewall or cloud storage – but who purchases the antivirus software for firewall or cloud storage? In my opinion, it is better to use separate apps for each task and avoid the complex apps that try to be everything. GridinSoft Anti-Malware will fit you if you are looking for a simple anti-malware solution with only essential functions for a reasonable price.

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