Comment by saghm
1 year ago
I'm not familiar with AV Comparatives. Do they have any incentives that might influence this result? Offhand, it seems like if Windows Defender is actually the right choice for basically everyone, they wouldn't have any reason to exist, so I can't help but wonder if that would affect their reporting.
They claim to be independent and I've never gotten the sense that any specific AV product is favored in their testing. I realize they could be biased or taking money while pretending they're not, but that's a tough thing to prove one way or the other.
I can say for sure though that Defender at times has a noticeable performance impact. That's why years ago I went looking for performance comparisons in the first place.
Fair enough! I don't pretend to have any expertise in this area, so I mostly was surprised to hear an analysis so contrary to what I've always heard to be the case. I could totally imagine that if there are others like me who just trust what they've heard, over time the narrative of "just use Defender" might become self-sustaining even if the status quo changes, so maybe this is a sign that I should look into things a bit more carefully next time I find myself using Windows.
Thanks for the informative response!