Intego Antivirus Windows Review

Intego Antivirus for Windows Review

Intego Antivirus for Windows is a relatively new product developed by Intego, thus bringing an otherwise Mac-oriented antivirus manufacturer to the Windows platform. Intego Antivirus for Windows is characterized by strong security and ease-of-use but lacks any extra features outside of its antivirus functionality.

Intego is a renowned antivirus vendor best known for its highly-secure Mac antivirus suite that offers quality protection against all kinds of malware as well as a number of extra features such as a backup tool and parental controls. Recently, Intego also came up with a new product – an antivirus for Windows PCs that further expands the variety of options offered by the company. However, we all know how oversaturated the Windows security software market is (and has always been) so the question here is: “Does an antivirus program for Windows that comes from a developer primarily known for its Mac products has what it takes to be worth using in 2020?”. Well, if you are interested in finding out the answer to this question, stay with us as we take a closer look at what Intego Antivirus for Windows has to offer.

Overview

At first glance, the Intego Antivirus for Windows is an intuitive and easy to use program capable of quietly keeping your PC protected without obstructing your workflow or requiring any extensive setting up from your side. However, being a relatively new antivirus developed by an antivirus vendor that is mostly known for its Mac products, there are bound to be certain shortcomings associated with this program, especially when comparing it to better established Windows security products that have been around for longer. Still, we will stay objective and tell you all that is worth mentioning about this antivirus so that you can decide for yourself if the latter is worthy of your consideration.

Setting up and Interface

The Intego Antivirus for Windows is both easy to set up and easy to use once installed, making it perfect for inexperienced users and/or ones who would rather not be bothered with extensive and time-consuming setting up and customization and who would prefer to use an antivirus that gives them optimal protection right off the bat, as soon as it gets installed, without the need to tinker with its settings to get the best out of it. If this sounds good to you, then Intego may be a good fit for your preferences.

The installation of the program is intuitive and everybody could easily complete the process without any problem. Once the program starts, you will be greeted by a clean interface that is easy to navigate through and shows you all the main options and functions on its main screen so you will probably not have to dig through pages and windows of settings to find what you need. On the left side of the antivirus window, you will see the main sections/tabs of the program – those are Dashboard, Scans, Quarantine, Security Reports, and Settings, and in the central part of the screen are the specific options for the section you have chosen, all of which are laid out in an easy to understand way, without the use of any unnecessary technobabble.

All things considered, if you are looking for an antivirus that will require minimum effort from your side to get going and that will probably not make you look for a user’s manual to figure out how to use a given function, then the Intego Antivirus for Windows would probably be a good option. However, if you are a more tech-savvy user who would prefer to have a wider range of options and features to choose from and tinker with, this antivirus may not satisfy your needs as it more or less a barebones product that offers little more than the basics of what antivirus is supposed to have (more on that in a moment).

Security and Performance

In terms of security, Intego does a fair job of keeping Windows computers protected both in real-time (the real-time protection is enabled by default) and on-demand, through its several scanning options. One good sign that tells us more about the protective capabilities of the program is that it is VB100 Certified, which is to say that the antivirus can stop no less than 95.5% of the malware listed in the WildList Organization’s “Wild List” of security threats. In short, those are malware samples that spread uncontrollably among a wide portion of the user base. The VB100 Certificate also means that Intego for Windows gives no more than 0.01% false positive malware alerts and that these results are recorded when the antivirus is used with its default/out-of-the-box settings, which further shows that one could simply install the program and it will offer its best protection without the need for the user to further customize any of its settings to improve the provided security.

However, despite the VB100 Certification, it must be said that Intego Windows is currently outmatched by many of its more popular and established competitors, including Norton, Avira, Avast, and others. Tests from different researchers show that even though the antivirus performs well against known threats that are included in its database, managing to stop all of them, it doesn’t always manage to stop malware samples that it is unfamiliar with, especially if those samples are of Ransomware threats. Strong heuristic and behavior-based detection is an especially important and, for that reason, sought-after feature in antivirus programs because it enables the antivirus to stop even threats that it has never encountered before and that are not present in the database of the program. Attacks from such malware are known as Zero-Day attacks and those are probably the most devastating because fewer security tools can counteract them. Now, the fact that Intego for Windows may occasionally fail to stop an unknown threat doesn’t mean that its protection against such malware is non-existent, it most certainly is present in the program, however, as we already stated, results show that there are simply antiviruses that do this better than Intego, at least for the time being.

One nice thing about Intego’s security is that it can detect not only Windows malware but also Mac and Linux malware on Windows PCs, making it a great option for users who have not only Windows but also Mac and/or Linux computers, especially if they tend to frequently transfer data between the different machines. A Mac or a Linux virus may not be able to damage your Windows PC but could stay hidden and undetected inside the latter and eventually get transferred to a system that it can actually damage. However, if you have Intego on your Windows machines, the chances of this happening would be greatly reduced.

As far as the performance of the antivirus is concerned, the program is very lightweight and its footprint on the overall system performance, both during scans and while the program is on stand-by, is virtually unnoticeable. This is good news for users who don’t have particularly powerful machines and would prefer not to burden their systems with overly-taxing antivirus suites that may slow-down the computer.

Scans and other Functions

When it comes to scanning, Intego offers everything you’d expect from a modern antivirus program. It has four different types of scan – Complete Virus Scan, Quick Scan, Custom Scan, and Schedule Scan.

The Complete Virus Scan will look for malware in the whole system and would take longer to complete than the other ones. Tests have shown that this scan option takes about 2 hours to complete on average but this largely depends on the computer itself, how big its hard-drives are, and how much data is stored in them. However, it’s worth noting that the time required to complete this scan is quite longer than that of other antivirus programs, which usually take anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes to go through the whole system.

The Quick Scan, on the other hand, takes about three or four minutes to finish as it only scans certain specific locations where malware is most likely to hide. These locations aren’t always the same and could change after an update of the antivirus if the developers have determined that certain different locations on the computer are more likely to contain malware. This is a good thing, in our opinion, as it improves the effectiveness of the Quick Scans and increases the chances of spotting newer threats using only this scanning option instead of the Complete Virus Scan.

Custom Scan will allow you to scan separate folders if you suspect that they may have malware in them and Schedule Scan will let you plan a scan into the future that Intego will perform automatically. You can set Intego to perform weekly or daily scans but there are not as many other scheduling options here as there are with other competing antiviruses.

By default, Intego for Windows will be set to carry out a weekly scan but you can change this if you don’t want it. As we already said above, the scans of the program would usually have no impact on system performance so you can start any type of scan and leave it in the background to finish while you are doing something else on your PC without worry that this will slow-down the latter.

In terms of other functions, here is the area in which the Intego Antivirus for Windows falls short, especially if we compare it to its more all-around competitors. To put it bluntly, Intego for Windows is little more than a malware scanner and removal program – it lacks any extra functions and features such as a built-in Firewall, VPN, parental controls, password manager, browser extensions, etc. Of course, the presence or lack of such extras do not define how good antivirus is at doing its primary job, that is to protect you from malware, but the truth is that there are many antivirus products out there that offer at least some form of additional features, including some security suites that have free versions that still come with certain extras that Intego for Windows lacks. It is also worth mentioning that this isn’t a characteristic present in all Intego products – the Mac version of the Antivirus offers parental controls, a backup tool, and a system optimizer among other bonus features, which comes to show that put more focus on their Mac product, which, to be fair, is perfectly understandable, seeing as how this is the product that the company is best known for.

Still, if you only need an antivirus to keep your computer safe and don’t particularly care about any of those other features that we mentioned, Intego for Windows could definitely satisfy your needs despite its lack of any more advanced functions.

Customer Support

Next, we must say a couple of words about the customer support offered by Intego’s Windows version. There is currently only one support variant and that is via e-mail available in the English and French languages. Unfortunately, there isn’t live chat or over-the-phone support so you must make to be as exhaustive in your email inquiries as possible so that you will receive a helpful answer and would hopefully not need to write another email with follow-up questions and wait for more to have those answered. To be fair, though, Intego’s promise that email inquiries by customers would be answered within the same business day or, if the email is sent too late that day, on the next business day, is being consistently kept and the answers to the user’s questions are always informative and helpful. Still, it would have been nice to have at least one other option to contact the support team of the antivirus.

In addition to the over-the-email customer support, Intego also offers a knowledge base on their website where users can find useful information about the company’s products, including the Intego Antivirus for Windows. However, it must be said that the information available about the Windows product is much more scarce and less detailed compared to that of the Mac antivirus. While this is somewhat understandable, it would be nice if the knowledge base gets updated to include more useful info about the Windows version of Intego – there are currently really not that many articles to inform the users about the specifics of this antivirus.

Pricing and money-back policy

Finally, we need to tell you about the pricing of this antivirus and the inclusion of a money-back policy which is a much-appreciated aspect of this product. Intego for Windows is affordable and a bit less expensive in comparison to other Windows antivirus solutions on the market. Of course, one must not forget that the functionality of Intego is, as mentioned earlier, very limited and there are virtually no bonus functions, tools, or features – only the antivirus itself. 

Intego’s tier 1 plan labeled Personal protects one PC for one year and is priced at €26.99. The tier two option is the Family plan and it offers protection for three Windows machines for a price of €36.99, making the effective price per protected device only about €12.33. However, what’s quite bizarre is that the tier 3 plan, labeled Extended, comes at a price of €73.99 which actually increases the effective price per protected PC, making it about €24.66. In other words, if you purchase the Family plan twice, you’d pay the same price as that of the Extended plan but would get protection for one more device making it virtually pointless to go for the Extended plan. In our opinion, if you need protection for two or more Windows PCs, the Family plan is the best option out of the three as its effective discount for more devices is quite good and you’d get protection for all your machines. Unfortunately, there currently doesn’t seem to be an option to get Intego for Windows and Mac within a single subscription plan.

Does Intego Antivirus for Windows has a free version?

The Intego Antivirus for Windows doesn’t have a free version but it has a 7-day free trial. The Intego Antivirus for Windows free 7-day trial allows users to test the program, see if it meets their requirements, and decide whether to purchase the full version.

Once the trial period ends, the antivirus would no longer work and the user would be prompted to purchase the paid version to continue using the program. If you download the trial version and eventually decide you don’t want to purchase the antivirus, it is best to uninstall the trial version because after the 7-day period is over you won’t have any use for it.

Does Intego offer a money-back guarantee?

Intego offers a money-back guarantee on a “no questions asked” basis. The Intego money-back guarantee allows users to refund the program within a 30-day period after purchasing it irrespective of the reason they might decide to do so.

This is a great aspect of the refund policy of Intego and is certainly one of the highlights of this product seeing as how very few antivirus vendors offer such an option. It doesn’t matter even if the program works perfectly and you experience no issues with it, you’d still have the option to refund it and get your money back so long as you request that within the 30-day period we mentioned. In addition to the 7-day free trial, the 30-day money-back guarantee really gives you all the opportunity you may need to figure out if this program is for you or if you should instead look for something else.

Final Notes

There is definitely a lot of work to be done towards enhancing and perfecting Intego, especially in the features department and the ransomware-protection of the program. However, other than that, Intego Antivirus for Windows is definitely an adequate and dependable security tool for Windows PCs capable of keeping the latter safe with minimal need for interaction from the side of the user. It’s pricing is fair and if you don’t mind the lack of bonus functions and/or don’t care about them, you can save some money by getting Intego for Windows instead of any of the more highly-priced alternatives out there.