Norton 360 Multi-device Review: Almost 360
Positives
Negatives
The Norton 360 Multi-device is heavy on intruders but very light on your system resources. It misses a few features that we believe could be essential, but performs almost perfect in all the services it provides.
Installation, UI and Features
Installation
You can get the Norton 360 Multi-device online as well as in a Box. The installation process is pretty straight-forward and doesnot need much intervention. The “Less than a minute remaining” dialogue box assures a fast install as well. Within a minute you’d see the Installation complete dialogue – it did pleasantly surprise us! In another whip, the software activates with your valid key, and integrates with your online Norton account. This product comes with 5 licences so you still have 4 more to go.
The default settings are ok with most users.
The whole Installation and activation process is over before you’ve realized it! The installations on Mac, Android as well as iOS are equally quick and thorough.
One concern is – The start-up screen shows all areas as Protected, but actually it’s not updated yet, nor ever run the scan, so Norton should probably scan the health of the computer right after installation to quickly show the appropriate status.
User Interface
PC Interface
Right after completion of installation, you’ll instantly start noticing different Norton components all over your computer like soldiers guarding it. You don’t necessarily have to restart your computer. The start-screen is almost similar across Nortons’s latest products designed to use mainly on Windows 8. Those tiles are same showing you the overall status of the software, with menus both at the top and on the right side.
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- Browser toolbar
If you’re on a particular UI and close it, the next time you start from taskbar – Norton will start from that very UI. Click on each tile for actionable items, start by clicking on them one-by-one. You’ll see the status, and actionable items below (“things you can do”).
A point to be noted here is that Symantec has now removed the year mark from their Norton products and made live update continuous.
Mobile Interface
We would’ve liked the prompt for connecting to online account to appear before entering the key screen, that way the app can automatically sync the key and spare the user from entering a long Alphanumeric key. But other than that, the mobile interface is pretty neat, with features like anti-theft, anti-malware, call and sms blocking and web protection.
Features, Usability and Performance
Features
Norton 360 Multi-device promises to provide you 360 degree protection and thus the name. It pretty much covers most of the important aspects. You have antivirus and spyware scans, family filter, online password vault, anti-theft, 25GB online backup and also some PC Tuneup utilities. The difference between this and Norton One is that you get a dedicated Norton support with Norton One for general and even repairing complex system infections. Feature wise they are similar.
Most of the services we mentioned above are self-explanatory. Tuneup tools cleans your useless files, registry and temporary files, controls start-up apps and runs a diagnostic scan to let you know of how secure you are. It does not scan for scrapped shortcuts though. Also we found the defragment tools missing – both files and registry. Most of the diagnostic reports are based on what other community.
The coolest thing is the management part. You can manage all your devices with one online account that gets updated with info as you use the products. The online vault manages your passwords across devices. Keeping a separate password for the account and vault is thoughtful.
Usability
Right from the installation till deleting a threat, Norton 360 Multi-device leaves you mostly as a spectator, which is great atleast from a layman point of view. The UI in general is not confusing with you see almost all components on the start screen. If you decide to play advance, as there are lots of options and tools, take care so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Biggest advantage is that I hardly had to change any settings for the software to work optimally as almost all of the options were by default set to the ones I would have liked – a very good feature for those not very familiar or don’t have time to fiddle around with custom settings.
Performance
Start-up
We found the Internet Security suite to be little shy to start, but absolutely no problem with the 360 Multi-device. It’s blazing fast.
Load on system
The software is light on the system resources. Even running a full scan takes about 110-120MB of memory, very less for a virus scanner. CPU usage is minimal while you’re not actively running the software. No more slowing down other programs while running a full scan.
Protection Benchmarks
We checked 360 MD on the following -
Malware – 4/4
Tracking cookies – 3/3
Phishing and malicious website detection – 5/5
Malicious E-mail content detection – 4/4
Parental website monitoring – 100% detection
False positive – 0/5 (less is better)
Adware – 2/2
We test it on real life threats on a separate test-machine and not on test viruses. Looking at that the result is very impressive. Also we were super-duper impressed with the accurate positive detection.
Pallab
