Which one is better: Norton or McAfee?

Norton and McAfee are compatible with antivirus with your PC, android, and macOS. These two antiviruses are widely known and used by people worldwide. These antiviruses are the top choice of people around the US and UK to provide protection against malware. To get to know, in the battle of McAfee vs. Norton, which is a better antivirus to protect your device against your device, you must follow along.

Step by Step comparison between Norton and McAfee

McAfee and Norton both provide antivirus protection to computer systems. However, along with antivirus protection, both of them have additional features.

Features:

McAfee: McAfee provides Multi-device Compatibility, Password Manager, Award-winning Antivirus, Home Network Security, Security Experts, and Online Support, Performance Optimization, Safe Web Browsing, File Shredder, Encrypted Storage, and Identity Theft Protection facility to its users.

Norton: On the other hand, Norton facilitates a Smart Firewall, PC Cloud Backup of 50 GB, Anti-Spyware, Online Threat Protection, Password Manager, Parental Controls, Secure VPN, PC Safe Cam, Antivirus, Malware & Ransomware Protection features for the computer.

Pricing:

McAfee: McAfee offers a first-year subscription for one device at $29.99. McAfee gives a 30-day free trial to users without any payment.in the US, McAfee offers identity protection to its users in this package, but in the UK, you must go for a higher subscription to get the identity protection.

Norton: First-year subscription to Norton is $19.99 after the discounted price. They offer a free trial also. Norton gives a 60-day money-back guarantee to its users. You can easily unsubscribe to Norton within 60 days if you don't like it's working and get your money back. Norton does not provide identity protection in this package, even in the US. You need to subscribe to the higher subscription for identity protection in the USA and UK.

Impact on Pc:

McAfee: McAfee takes about 2 hours to run a complete test while the PC is on and the user is working on it for the first use. There is a slight drop in speed during this time. The second run immediately after the first one takes only a few minutes. McAfee had a minor impact on performance.

Norton: When not performing the scan, Norton utilizes a higher CPU and CU. It shows less control disk utilization. During full scans, less CPU and the same amount of memory are used as that of McAfee. Both McAfee and Norton had minimal impact on speed and performance.

Customer Support: Both McAfee and Norton have customer support for their users.

McAfee: McAfee provides help to its users with different gadgets such as PC, Macs, mobile, and billing. Virtual assistant for help is also available on McAfee. Along with this, a community forum is also present to post questions.

Read more about how I communicate with McAfee's customer service executives.

Norton: Norton provides 24-hour customer support every day of the year. Live chat facility, community forum, phone call facility with a customer representative, and Facebook and Twitter account is also present to its users.

Read more about how to talk with Norton's Representative.

Sign up & Installation:

McAfee: Sign-up and installation with McAfee are quick and easy. A first-year discount appears on your screen and is applied at the time of checkout. It offers a few installation options which you can ignore and proceed to run your software.

Norton: Norton has a quick sign-in, checkout, and straightforward installation. You run through a few installation option recommendations, ignore them, proceed to buy, and then run the software. It takes about 10 minutes to run the software.

Effectiveness against Malware:

McAfee: When the user runs a test on McAfee in real-time malware threats when the PC is on, McAfee blocks the files, which can be potential malware. McAfee fails to detect the possible malware in multiple malware tests when the PC is offline. McAfee gives fewer false-positive results for the malware.

Norton: Norton allows fewer potential malware files to download in the real-time malware threats testing but prevents them from causing severe damage to the system. Norton also fails to detect malware in multiple malware tests when the PC is off. Norton gives more false positive results against malware compared to McAfee.

Conclusion:

When you ask to pick one antivirus from McAfee vs. Norton, Norton is slightly better than McAfee. Norton is a good product at a reasonable price and a better protection score. Norton has slightly better features than McAfee. Although the speed of McAfee is a little bit better than Norton's, it's a marginal difference.