McAfee+ Premium review: Comprehensive online and offline protection at a low starting price

McAfee has been around for decades, and it has come a long way from the antivirus software I remember slowing down my PC as a teenager. Having tested McAfee+ Premium extensively, I can confirm that it’s one of the best antivirus software suites available today. It packs plenty of useful tools, such as Identity Monitoring, Secure VPN with no limits, File Shredder, and Tracker Remover.

The software sports a user-friendly interface that makes it a delight to use, and 24/7 customer support over chat and phone ensures all your problems are quickly resolved. Low impact on system resources is another highlight. Even though the Full Scan takes a while and renewal price makes your eye twitch, neither of those are dealbreakers.

For the complete breakdown, read my full McAfee+ Premium review.

McAfee+ Premium review: Specs

McAfee+ Premium review: Costs & what’s covered

Similar to other antivirus software suites, McAfee offers different plans for consumers and businesses alike. Let’s talk about McAfee’s consumer plans first. The most basic plan, Essential, covers up to five devices and is available for $39 / £33 for the first year.

The McAfee+ Premium Individual plan is a step up from Essential, and costs $49 / £49 for the first year. It naturally includes everything Essential offers, plus a Social Privacy Manager as well as scanning the web for your personal information. McAfee+ Advanced Individual is the most expensive plan, offering the most comprehensive protection. It’ll cost you $89 / £74 for the first year. Alongside everything else included in Essential and Premium, Advanced includes up to $1 million identity theft coverage, bank and credit card transaction monitoring, credit lock and security freeze, and more.

It’s important to note that after your first year is up, McAfee’s renewal prices go up by a lot. For instance, the Premium plan I tested costs $149 after the first year — a steep $100 price hike. Norton 360 Deluxe, in comparison, costs $124 per renewal, making it slightly cheaper than McAfee.

There are many family plans available, too, such as Premium Family ($69 starting price) and Ultimate Family ($249 starting price). If you own a business and want a competent antivirus software suite, a number of plans are available exclusively through Dell in the U.S. and Currys in the U.K., starting at just $24 / £11 and going all the way up to $169 — depending on the number of devices and features, of course.

It’s important to read the fine print to understand what you’re signing up for, but in case you aren’t happy with your purchase, McAfee offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Also, if McAfee fails to catch a virus and your device gets infected, the company’s Virus Protection Pledge states that it’ll refund you the amount you paid for your subscription.

McAfee+ Premium review: Protection

The more you pay for your McAfee subscription, the more protection you’ll get. For instance, the Essential plan protects up to five devices from scams and monitors the dark web for any personal detail leaks. The Premium plan (that I tested), on the other hand, covers unlimited macOS, Windows, iOS and Android devices, and offers extra features like Social Privacy Manager, Personal Data Cleanup and Online Account Cleanup (scans only). I’ll discuss these in detail shortly.

Regardless of the subscription you sign up for, McAfee offers a secure VPN, password manager and identity monitoring across all. But it’s important to note that it doesn’t offer cloud backup or ransomware protection, which is surprising. Competitors, like Bitdefender, Avast One and Norton 360 offer these to a degree, so it’s worth considering them instead if these features are important to you.

Before diving into my experience with McAfee, let’s take a look at how three independent labs that test antivirus software twice a year (for the most part) rate it. AV Test’s June 2026 report rated McAfee as a “Top Product,” with 6/6 scores across Protection, Performance and Usability. Bitdefender, Avast and Norton 360 all received 100% scores, too, which goes to show that McAfee is just as good as its rivals, if not better.

AV Comparatives’ April 2026 test report rated McAfee 1st out of the 19 antivirus software suites it tested — which is outstanding, as McAfee upstaged Malwarebytes, Avast, Norton 360 and Bitdefender. McAfee scored 90/100 in AVC, 96.7/100 in Procyon, and 3.3 in Impact. The low Impact rating means that the software doesn’t have a negative impact on your system’s resources. It blows the likes of Malwarebytes (17.6 Impact score) out of the water.

Lastly, I looked at SE Labs’ (U.K.) June 2026 report, which awarded McAfee an AAA rating with 98% protection accuracy and an overall 99% score. McAfee is edged out by Norton 360 and Bitdefender — but only just — as both of them achieved a 100% protection accuracy score.

McAfee+ Premium review: Performance

Image 1 of 3

Once you’ve bought your subscription, it’s time to download and install McAfee on your device and activate it. Doing so is extremely straightforward. Simply enter your product key, email address and billing information into McAfee’s dedicated activation page. You’ll then be prompted to download the software onto your machine. On our testing rig, it took just under five minutes to get up and running.

On Android and iOS smartphones, you’ll need to download the free app from the respective app store, and punch in your registered email address to activate your subscription on your phone. Doing so on my Google Pixel 10 Pro XL barely took any time — perhaps two minutes or so.

Image 1 of 6

After installing McAfee and activating my Premium plan on our MSI testing rig, I ran a Quick Scan and a Full Scan, both of which are easily accessible from the app’s main page. As its name suggests, McAfee’s Quick Scan quickly scans your computer, and it isn’t as in-depth as the Full Scan. It took 29 seconds for McAfee to quickly scan 38,846 files. No threats were detected. It’s handy that McAfee offers a Quick Scan option, unlike Bitdefender.

A Full Scan took much longer, in comparison. While software suites like Bitedefender and Malwarebytes scanned hundreds of thousands of files in under 26 minutes or so, McAfee took 34 minutes and 40 seconds to scan 351,968 files. It’s quite slow, really! I had enough time to do some stretches, make myself a cup of coffee, and have a chat with my coworkers, and McAfee was still scanning. But as I expected, it didn’t catch any anomalies or threats to the PC.

The aforementioned scans were conducted with no other heavy-duty apps running in the background, so to get a clearer picture of how McAfee impacts system resources, I ran in-game benchmark tests in Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon 5. As you can see from the table above, Cyberpunk 2077’s frame rate dipped from 99fps to 87fps, while Forza Horizon 5’s went from 113fps to 95fps. I didn’t notice any lag while gaming, which is great. It’s worth pointing out that I achieved 97fps in Cyberpunk 2077 and 123fps in Forza Horizon 5 with Bitdefender running a Full Scan, though. Still, McAfee’s impact on system performance isn’t that noticeable.

After finishing my in-game benchmarking, I ran a few internet speed tests at speedtest.net to see how McAfee impacted upload and download speeds. You can see the results in the table above. Surprisingly, neither the Quick Scan nor the Full Scan impacted the speeds by that much. Malwarebytes, in comparison, impacted upload speeds by a lot, as I was able to achieve only 592.4Mbps upload speeds with its Deep Scan running.

My testing goes to show that McAfee doesn’t have a detrimental effect on system resources — whether you’re browsing the internet or playing system-intensive games. Perhaps McAfee has finally gotten rid of the stereotype that it’s a drain on system resources.

McAfee+ Premium review: Features

Alongside the two different types of scans, McAfee includes a bunch of extras to protect you against online and offline threats. I tested a few of the goodies included in the McAfee+ Premium Individual plan, starting with Identity Monitoring.

Image 1 of 4

This service constantly monitors the internet, including the dark web, for any identity theft, fraud or breaches. You can add credit cards, passports, national IDs, email addresses, and even different usernames. McAfee will then send you timely security alerts and provide guidance as to how to protect yourself. I put in a few different email addresses and usernames (such as the one I use on Instagram) and McAfee didn’t find any active breaches.

Image 1 of 3

Next, I tried File Shredder, and it’s similar to the one you get with Malwarebytes. It enables you to permanently delete files to varying degrees, and it essentially overwrites data several times so there’s no trace left. Think of it like shredding a physical paper document to ensure no one else can read it. It worked well in my testing, as I used it to permanently delete files in the PC’s recycle bin.

Image 1 of 4

There’s also a handy Tracker Remover tool which, as its name suggests, removes unwanted items, like temporary files and cookies that sites could potentially use to track you online. The Tracker Remover reviews temporary files, recycle bin items, browser cookies and trackers, and browser history, and then deletes them if they aren’t needed. In my testing, it took just under two minutes to free up 1.14 GB and remove 3,000 items.

Image 1 of 3

Last but not least, I tried McAfee’s unlimited Secure VPN which is included in every subscription plan. It masks your IP address using bank-grade AES 256-bit encryption and connecting to servers located in almost 50 countries. The VPN takes less than a minute to connect to your chosen country and once that’s done, your online identity and location are protected. You can customize it to connect automatically when joining a network with weak security, for instance, and even add trusted networks where the VPN shouldn’t be activated.

McAfee+ Premium review: Interface

Image 1 of 3

McAfee sports a clean and user-friendly interface, and I’ve had no issues using it whatsoever. The online dashboard, McAfee My Account, gives you quick access to your subscription details and it lets you edit billing and renewal details. The downloaded software is straightforward to use and understand, too, thanks to plenty of signposting and explanations.

But unlike Malwarebytes, the McAfee app’s window can’t be maximized or made full-size, which means you have to scroll through the various settings one by one. This isn’t uncommon, though, as neither Bitdefender’s nor Avast One’s windows can be made to take up the full screen.

The McAfee mobile app is just as user-friendly if not more. The initial download took just 130MB of space on my Google Pixel 10 Pro XL — though this will naturally grow with use.

Image 1 of 2

I’ve seen many online users complaining about the uninstallation process on desktop. However, I didn’t experience any issues uninstalling McAfee from our testing rig. I wasn’t prompted again and again to keep the software, and it took just under 10 minutes to remove the software and restart my machine.

McAfee+ Premium review: Support

Image 1 of 3

If you find yourself in a pickle or have any questions about McAfee and your subscription, you can get in touch with customer support either via online chat or over the phone. This is a similar level of support to what’s offered by Bitdefender and Norton 360.

I tested out the online chat function and I found it super easy to use. I asked the AI assistant a question and it answered promptly (and accurately). I then asked to speak to a human and within a couple of minutes, I was connected to a human agent. I like that I didn’t have to keep explaining why I needed to speak to a person.

If you need immediate assistance and can’t be bothered by typing, you can always ring McAfee’s customer service team which is available 24/7. It’s nice that McAfee offers phone support, unlike Malwarebytes. It makes getting help easier.

McAfee+ Premium review: Verdict

McAfee+ Premium is a strong all-round antivirus package that doesn’t skimp on features and tools that keep you safe online and offline. Protection is excellent, independent lab results are consistent (and impressive), and the software doesn’t get in the way when you’re gaming or browsing the internet. The user experience is sublime, too, as the software sports a clean, user-friendly interface.

There are a couple of catches, though, such as the Full Scan taking over 35 minutes to complete in our testing. While the cost for the first year isn’t much more than its competitors, renewal price can feel quite steep. Are either of those dealbreakers? Not necessarily, as they’re overshadowed by everything else on offer.

At the end of the day, McAfee delivers a polished, capable antivirus suite that goes toe-to-toe with the likes of Norton 360 and Bitdefender.