Bitdefender Mobile Security was rated THE BEST Android antivirus app in 2022

Putting one of the best Android antivirus apps on your Android smartphone or tablet can help protect them from corrupted or malicious apps and other kinds of malware.

There are a wide range of choices available to suit both your budget and your desired protection level. In addition to excellent malware detection and prevention, the best Android antivirus apps also include privacy and anti-theft features. While most of these apps have a free service tier that allow you to test them out before paying for an annual subscription, some are entirely free.

Some of the best Android antivirus apps on this list will backup your contacts and other important data, track your phone or tablet via GPS, take a picture of a phone thief using your device camera and even allow you to use your Wear OS smartwatch to find your phone.

We rounded up the best offerings from the biggest names in the mobile antivirus business Avast, Bitdefender, Lookout, McAfee, Norton and even Google itself and rated their Android apps based on setup, interface, usability, extra features and of course, their ability to protect your devices from the latest cyber threats.

To determine the level of protection offered by each app, we used data from the independent German testing lab AV-Test which rates most major security apps on their ability to detect malware and other threats. We also used the Geekbench 5 app to measure the impact each of these apps have on overall Android performance.

What are the best Android antivirus apps?

Based on our tests, the best Android antivirus app today is Bitdefender Mobile Security ($15 per year) which offers nearly flawless malware protection and a wide range of features.

While Norton Mobile Security (starting at $15 per year) has even better protection, Norton has discontinued the excellent free tier of Norton Mobile Security and its anti-theft features, so you need to pay something to protect your devices.

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Both Avast Mobile Security and McAfee Mobile Security offer a lot of features for free and do fairly well in malware-detection tests. However, Avast anti-theft and call-blocking tools did work well and the free versions of both apps show a lot of ads.

Lookout Security & Antivirus was one of the first mobile antivirus apps and has a compelling identity protection option. Still though, there little third-party lab testing data on the efficiency of Lookout antivirus, so we don't really know exactly how well it protect against malware.

Google Play Protect on the other hand is pre-installed on every Android phone with Google Play. Unfortunately, Its not the best at protecting against malware but it has certainly improved over the years.

For malware protection on other platforms, be sure to visit our pages on the best antivirus software and the best Mac antivirus.

Source : https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-android-antivirus