14 DAY TRIAL // AVTEST, a company specialized in cyber-security benchmarks, put 25 Android security apps to the test in a six-month study.
Apps were not rated only on their protection capabilities, but also on their usability and extra features, with apps that are a battery drain or eat up bandwidth receiving lower scores than their competition.
Four apps get a perfect score for protection
When it came to actual protection, security researchers threw over 20,000 malware specimens at 25 identical Android Lollipop 5.1.1 devices, each running a different cyber-security app.
Only four protection apps scored a perfect 100% as far as protection against real-time threats and reference malware sets is concerned, and those were Bitdefender, ESET, Qihoo 360 and Sophos.
The good part is that, out of all the 25 Android protection apps, none went under 95% detection rates in both real-time and reference set tests.
Some security apps get rewarded for extra features
In a second suite of tests, apps were also ranked based on their other features, like the overall battery drain, CPU load, bandwidth usage, the number of false positive alerts, and the presence of extra features like anti-theft functions, safe mobile payments, app locking or system optimization tools.
In this test, more security vendors distinguished themselves, getting a perfect score of 13 points. These are Baidu, Bitdefender, Cheetah Mobile (Clean Master), G Data, Qihoo 360, Symantec, and Trend Micro.
"The notion that watchdogs for Android put a burden on the system is totally groundless. The endurance test proves that even apps with the best security performance work inconspicuously in the background and do not put a burden on either the processor or the battery," says Maik Morgenstern, CTO AV-TEST GmbH. "Users who have gone without the use of a protection app based on groundless prejudices ought to immediately perform the installation after all. They have enough to choose from."
