A fully featured security suite which offers protection from all modern threats and will even alert you if your credentials find their way onto the dark web. Here's our Norton 360 review.
Should I Buy Norton 360 Deluxe?
Our Verdict
- Norton 360 offers a huge range of features which go far beyond antivirus for your PC and laptop. There's a VPN service which will also run on your phone, plus great protection from phishing and other online threats. It's a great deal at this price.
Price When Reviewed
- $9.99 (1 month), $59.99 (1 year)
Norton by Symantec is one of the most famous names in the antivirus industry. These days, of course, you need more than just antivirus: a good security suite should protect all your devices from all current threats. And that's really what's behind the 360 name: it means all-round protection.
And this year, more features have been added including a VPN service and protection for webcams.
We've ranked Norton 360 Deluxe number two in our overall antivirus chart, just behind Bitdefender. They are both great options, and you can find out more about how they compare by reading our Bitdefender vs Norton review.
Price & Availability
Deluxe sits a rung lower than the most expensive consumer offering from Norton. That title goes to Norton 360 Premium, which protects 10 devices, offers 75GB of online storage, and parental control tools. If you want something more stripped down, there's the Standard version, which protects just one device, includes 10GB of cloud storage and lacks the parental controls.
The price of Norton 360 Deluxe's protection officially weighs in at £79.99 for up to five devices including PC, Mac, iOS and Android, though hefty discounts are available throughout the year from the Norton website which is why we've chosen to list the discounted price. That will get you one year of protection including 50GB of cloud storage, but the price - even discounted - jumps up to £89.99 for two years.
But don't forget Norton's VPN service is now included in the package. That's worth £19.99 per year on its own.
UK readers can sign up to Norton here. Alternatively it's available to purchase from Currys PC World, Argos and Amazon.
In the US, Norton has a different pricing structure. You can opt for a monthly subscription where you pay $9.99 (discounted to $6.99 at the time of writing) for the same service, or $99.99 for a year ($39.99 at the discounted rate).
Ease of Use & Features
Like many of its competitors Norton 360 is a relatively slick-looking and easy-to-use product. There's now a new interface which pops up first, which essentially adds easy access to the newer stuff including the VPN, cloud backup and password manager, but the old interface (called classic) is still there when you click on Device Security, and still includes performance optimisations.
- Antivirus
- Firewall
- VPN
- Password manager
- Cloud backup
- Dark web monitoring
- Parental controls (not in 360 Standard)
- SafeCam
The monitoring is perhaps the only item in the list that needs explaining. Norton bought LifeLock a couple of years ago, and has integrated it not just into the company name (Norton LifeLock) but into Norton 360. Put simply, it keeps an eye on sites on the dark web in case any of your details pop up for sale, and it will then notify you if they do so you can take action to change passwords, email addresses and so on.
The newest feature is SafeCam which monitors for apps which request use the camera on your device and alerts you so you can block those attempts if necessary.
Protection
Norton's antivirus engine benefits from technology and cloud support provided by parent company Symantec, including SONAR Protection. This detects malware by examining the behaviour of running applications. Like all antivirus, its performance varies from month to month, but according to AV-Test's latest report, it managed perfect scores. And even when it didn't perform flawlessly in the previous report, it still blocked 99.8% of threats.
If that's not good enough, Norton offers a "100% guarantee" that viruses will be removed - including by its own experts. And if they can't, you get your money back.
The Windows app is discreet with few pop-ups appearing at all. Occasionally, you'll see a message about the background scan completing - in Windows, that is - but because it runs when you're not using your computer, it's hardly intrusive. In fact, one of the only times you're guaranteed to see a pop-up is when Norton analyses downloaded files for you, which is a good thing.
If you don't add this battery of web protection when you first install the product, after a week or so Norton asks if you'd like to revisit your decision. A downside here is that if you click all four Install links (as shown below), your home page changes to a Norton search page. This may raise the hackles of some users with memories of a time when products would routinely try to change your home page to dodgy search engines that produce commercially skewed results. But, naturally, you don't have to do this.
Extras
Although we weren't overly impressed with Norton's VPN service, when you're getting it bundled effectively free with Norton 360 it's harder to criticise. It will protect you when your on your phone or laptop in cafes and airports with public Wi-Fi, but isn't really for unblocking Netflix or other content.
Cloud backup is valuable and adds extra protection for your most precious files, even though there's ransomware protection built into the main antivirus module for files stored locally.
Performance Optimisation
The bundled performance tools cover the usual bases, and comprise three modules: Optimise Disk, File Cleanup and Startup Manager. They're not really security features and can be considered more of a bonus.
The File Cleanup facility is useful as it frees up space occupied by temporary files. Startup Manager uses community data to let you know which of your apps use a lot of resources so you can decide which ones to disable.
After 30 days of use, a Report Card pops up to give you a summary of what the product did for you in the previous month. This includes the number of WiFi networks protected, file cleanups performed, analysed downloads and the amount of disk space cleared of temporary files.
There's also a Silent Mode which stops pop-ups and scheduled tasks.
Verdict
With great
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