McAfee Review 2024

In this McAfee review, we’ll break down the product’s features and plans and provide everything you need to know about it.

McAfee is one of the only antiviruses to cover an unlimited number of devices with a subscription, making it an excellent pick for families and businesses, as well as individuals.

After thoroughly testing its features, we’ve prepared an in-depth performance review, and we’ll cover how it compares to the best antiviruses, as well as the unique benefits McAfee offers.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. What is McAfee Antivirus?
2. Is McAfee Safe?
3. McAfee Plans & Pricing
4. McAfee Security Features
5. McAfee Performance
6. McAfee Compatibility and Ease of Use
7. How Does McAfee Compare Against Other Antiviruses?
8. How to Set Up McAfee Antivirus
9. McAfee Antivirus Customer Support And User Reviews
10. Our Other Antivirus Guides
11. FAQs
12. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. What is McAfee Antivirus?
2. Is McAfee Safe?
3. McAfee Plans & Pricing
Show Full Guide
4. McAfee Security Features
5. McAfee Performance
6. McAfee Compatibility and Ease of Use
7. How Does McAfee Compare Against Other Antiviruses?
8. How to Set Up McAfee Antivirus
9. McAfee Antivirus Customer Support And User Reviews
10. Our Other Antivirus Guides
11. FAQs
12. References

What is McAfee Antivirus?

Today, there are McAfee antivirus solutions for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices, and the company has started to use AI to improve its success rate against emerging cyber threats.

McAfee blocks 42.4 million threats each day and has a database of 630,000+ phishing sites.

Among its competitors, McAfee stands out for its flexible plans, which range from low-cost options for one to five devices to some of the most expensive premium plans in the industry, with a wide range of identity protection features and coverage for unlimited devices.

Is McAfee Safe?

McAfee is an antivirus provider you can trust with your privacy and security. Cybersecurity experts and independent research labs agree that it is an exceptional antivirus and anti-malware tool that can keep your devices safe.

The software protects over 600 million devices today and is regarded as one of the best Windows antiviruses. Its tools allow you to identify security vulnerabilities and fix gaps in your protection.

It’s also one of the few antiviruses to let you collect logs for its customer support teams, improving the user experience and the overall safety of your devices.

McAfee Plans & Pricing

McAfee offers a range of paid plans at different price points. So, is McAfee worth it? From VPN and antivirus protection with its affordable Basic plan to the Ultimate plan, McAfee likely has the tools you need at a reasonable price point. Here are McAfee’s core plans:

Can I Get McAfee for Free?

Is McAfee free? McAfee doesn’t offer a free-forever plan, but you can test its services with a 30-day trial. The free trial uses the Essential plan, which covers the core security features but doesn’t extend to its identity protection or online security tools.

McAfee also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all its plans, meaning you can get a refund if you aren’t satisfied.

McAfee Security Features

McAfee focuses on keeping you safe online and detecting and removing malware. Although it may not offer as many extra tools as TotalAV or Avast, it has one of the best identity theft protection kits.

In this section of our McAfee Antivirus review, we’ll cover what each feature can do for you.

Virus Scans

Besides real-time malware scanning on the files you open and access, McAfee lets you schedule and run scans on demand.

Here’s how each scan type McAfee offers works:

• Quick Scan — Checks frequently infected drive locations for common threats. This scan can take from 5 to 15 minutes.
• Full Scan — Checks every file and folder on your device for malware, including the most persistent and well-hidden threats. This can take 30 minutes or more and will slow down your device while it runs.
• Scheduled Scan — Lets you pick between three pre-made scan templates, which can run weekly or bi-weekly. You can also create your own schedule by selecting the time and day of the week to scan and can start a scan On Demand.
• Individual Files — You can right-click any file or folder and pick “Scan” to check them for malware.

Real-Time Antivirus Protection

McAfee offers real-time antivirus protection, scanning every file you interact with for malware, spyware, and viruses. It will automatically check the files you open and download, as well as programs running in the background – something that’s critical given the increasing prevalence of ransomware attacks.

This enables McAfee to safeguard your devices from zero-day threats and novel viruses by monitoring for unusual behavior. As this process may slow down your device, McAfee allows you to exclude programs you trust from checkups, improving your device’s performance.

Firewall

McAfee offers a dedicated firewall, which serves as a first line of defense and can protect you from unsafe networks and malicious sites. The firewall includes a two-way filter for incoming and outgoing traffic to ensure malicious actors can’t intercept your data.

The McAfee Firewall will also prevent your apps from interacting with potentially dangerous programs and websites so your data can’t be exploited. The firewall is a great addition for any device, especially if you need to connect to potentially unsafe networks – and the VPN can also help here.

McAfee Protection Score

McAfee Protection Score is a helpful feature that gives you an at-a-glance overview of the quality of your online protection. For example, adding the Web Protection feature to your browser will increase your score, while leaving accounts compromised by data breaches unsecured will lower it.

The feature is extremely intuitive and highlights urgent threats, explaining their significance and the steps needed to fix them.

McAfee Scam Protection

McAfee uses AI to identify malicious websites. Once detected, McAfee adds these websites to its database so they can be blocked in future.

When you’re browsing the web or opening emails, McAfee will warn you if you try to open a malicious link or attachment. Although most antiviruses provide a similar feature, we were impressed with McAfee’s Scam Protection, as it will also protect you from fraudulent texts and social media messages.

Web Protection

This browser extension complements McAfee’s Scam Protection feature by blocking websites that host malware or may expose you to phishing attacks, and it will alert you of known risks if you download malware-infected files. It will also highlight unsafe links when you browse on social media.

We found the WebAdvisor extension easy to set up and configure, and it’s compatible with all popular browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Internet Explorer.

VPN

McAfee is one of the best antiviruses with a VPN, and it has one of the largest server networks for a provider that primarily focuses on antivirus features. With a reported 2,000+ servers across 48 countries, McAfee can help you use the internet securely and anonymously.

The VPN secures your traffic with AES-256 encryption, includes a kill switch to stop data leaks, and stops anyone tracking your internet use. McAfee states the VPN doesn’t keep logs, though WebAdvisor does, of course, track the sites you visit.

In testing, McAfee’s VPN proved effective against IP leaks, and we had no issues unblocking foreign content libraries on streaming platforms like Netflix.

Social Privacy Manager

To help you keep your privacy intact on social media sites, McAfee lets you link your accounts to its Social Privacy Manager extension.

McAfee offers four categories of personalized recommendations on how to make social media accounts more private and how to stop apps from collecting data.

Personal Data Cleanup and Online Account Cleanup

McAfee’s Personal Data Cleanup feature addresses the issue of websites engaging in data brokering and trading your data.

Cheaper plans let you scan data broker websites to see where your data is being collected and shared. Higher-tier plans automatically scan these websites and can assist you with requests to have your data removed.

Online Account Cleanup helps you find and delete online accounts you no longer need. Connecting it to your email addresses allows McAfee to locate accounts associated with them so you can deactivate them if wanted. The feature works with Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, MSN, and Yahoo! Mail.

Password Manager

McAfee’s Password Manager feature, True Key, helps to protect your online accounts from brute force attacks and hijacking. Your account master password is the only password you’ll need to remember, as True Key can store and auto-fill all the passwords you need online.

We found True Key easy to use. It doesn’t require you to log in every time you restart a trusted device, but you can change this and add multi-factor authentication to secure your account.

McAfee uses AES-256 encryption to secure your password vault. The company also has a strict zero-trust policy, meaning not even its employees can open your password vault to access your accounts.

Parental Controls

McAfee offers a solid set of parental controls with its family plans that are designed to help you manage and monitor your children’s online activities. McAfee’s Parental Controls make it a competitor to some of the best parental control apps.

The three main features McAfee’s Parental Controls offer are:

• Location-Based Alerts — Mark locations on your map and receive notifications when your children enter or leave them.
• Manage Screen Time — You can determine how long your children can use their devices per session or per day and make changes remotely.
• Limit Content —- Block access to inappropriate content for your children to ensure they can’t open websites or apps containing inappropriate content.

McAfee Performance

Our team has thoroughly tested McAfee’s antivirus tools and real-time and web-based protection features on a range of different devices, looking at performance, functionality, and usability.

Although we had no performance issues while running quick and custom scans, the full scan slightly slowed down our devices, so you should ideally schedule when you want to run a full scan in advance to minimize disruption.

We didn’t see any performance impact on our devices from the browser extensions, which are lightweight and compact and don’t overburden you with pop-ups or push notifications.

For in-depth lab testing, we also consulted results from AV-Test, a leading independent cyber security research firm. AV-Test ranks antiviruses based on their performance, usability, and protection.

McAfee achieved a perfect score of 18/18, with full points in every category. It caught 100% of zero-day and prevalent malware threats, rarely issued false malware warnings, and performed significantly better than industry averages in terms of its impact on performance.

In 14 sets of tests over the last two and a half years, McAfee got full marks in 12 assessments (18/18) and only dropped half a point in each of the remaining two (17.5/18), indicating consistently excellent performance.

McAfee Compatibility and Ease of Use

McAfee ran well on all of the operating systems we tested it on, and we found it easy to use. It neatly separates out features and provides short descriptions of their functionality, so even first-time antivirus users won’t have issues mastering it.

Here’s how McAfee’s apps look and perform on each operating system:

How Does McAfee Compare Against Other Antiviruses?

McAfee has excellent malware detection rates and identity theft protection features, but it faces some very strong competition from providers like Norton and TotalAV, which draw frequent comparisons.

Here’s an overview to help you compare McAfee to its closest competitors:

McAfee Antivirus Customer Support And User Reviews

When dealing with your device security and online privacy, having a reliable customer support team you can contact is crucial. We were impressed to find McAfee offers 24/7 chat assistance, phone assistance, and a user forum.

We tried chatting with McAfee’s support, and after a short conversation with a bot, it connected us to a human customer service operator. The team member was knowledgeable, pleasant, helpful, and clear – which isn’t always the case.

McAfee has a comprehensive knowledge center and monthly “Answers” sessions, where a senior McAfee team member answers frequently asked questions and provides tips on using McAfee Antivirus.

Many McAfee user reviews praise the service’s customer support team and the usability of its apps. Many reviews also describe the service as being easy to cancel and note that the free trial is an excellent way to test its features before you commit to a subscription.

We found many reviews praising McAfee’s online protection tools, including the dark web scanner and real-time scanning features. However, there are many negative reviews as well.

Most negative reviews complain about McAfee reporting false positives, which prevent users from accessing websites or launching apps. McAfee makes it easy to “whitelist” programs and websites, though, so this shouldn’t be a major issue.

Strangely, given McAfee’s excellent testing scores, it has a “Bad” overall score on Trustpilot, with numerous one-star reviews. However, McAfee Total Protection has a 4.3/5 rating on GetApp, and McAfee AntiVirus Plus has a score of 4.2/5 on G2, suggesting Trustpilot’s reviews are anomalous.

Our Other Antivirus Guides

Although McAfee is one of the most flexible antivirus providers we’ve tested, there are plenty of other solutions for different devices and use cases. Here are some of our other antivirus guides to help you find the right provider for your needs and requirements:

• Best Antivirus for Mac
• Best Free Antivirus
• Best Antivirus for Gaming PCs
• Best Spyware Remover
• Best Business Antivirus Software
• Best Antivirus for Android

FAQs