Not every security suite uses the words “security” or “suite” in its name. Panda Dome Advanced gives you antivirus, firewall, VPN, and more. It fits the suite category more closely than the lower-tier Panda Dome Essential, adding parental control and enhanced ransomware protection. However, it scored poorly in tests for protection against malware and phishing. In the realm of entry-level security suites, our Editors’ Choice winner is Bitdefender Internet Security, with perfect scores from the antivirus labs and a wealth of effective security features.
Getting Started With Panda Dome Advanced
When you install Panda Dome Advanced, you’ll create or log into your online Panda account. If you’ve already activated your subscription, you can just log into the account and download the appropriate installer for your device running Windows, macOS, or Android. This review focuses on the Windows edition, as the other two platforms don’t gain any new features beyond what you get in Panda Dome Essential.
Panda’s security programs stand out from their competition. Instead of the usual white or gray background marked off by buttons and panels, all Panda programs use an inspiring nature scene as a background. You can choose among eight backgrounds or set it to change automatically from time to time. Combined with the minimalist icons that represent security features, it’s a pretty and relaxing look.
(Credit: Panda)When you open the program, you see five icons arrayed along the bottom of the screen. Scrolling down reveals another dozen, for a total of 17. If the simple images don't immediately bring an icon's function to mind, just point at it to see its label. A handy button at the bottom right puts all the labels in view at once.
(Credit: Panda)The 15 icons in Panda Dome Essential lined up nicely in three rows of five. Panda Dome Advanced sacrifices a little symmetry to make room for Anti-Ransomware and Parental Control.
What Does Panda Dome Advanced Cost?
This suite is the entry-level security suite in Panda's somewhat unusual lineup. Its starting price of $56.99 per year for a single license is in the normal range. Bitdefender’s entry-level suite goes for $59.99, for example, and Avira’s for $57.99.
Webroot Internet Security Plus starts (and ends) its pricing lineup with a three-license yearly subscription for $59.99. Bitdefender costs more, $84.99 at the three-license level, leaving Panda’s $75.99 price for three licenses in the middle. For another $10, you can get five Panda licenses, and that $85.99 price is in the expected range.
You do have the option to use your Panda licenses for protecting macOS and Android devices. When you start doing that, you’re likely to want an even bigger subscription. For $117.99 per year, you can install Panda on 10 devices. That’s a bit more than the $109.99 you pay for Norton 360 Deluxe, but then, that Norton subscription only covers five devices.
But why stop at 10? For $135.99, you can install Panda protection on as many Windows, macOS, or Android devices as you like. That’s good, but a $139.99 McAfee+ subscription includes McAfee protection on ChromeOS and iOS devices, which is beyond the Android, macOS, and Windows coverage you get with Panda.
Shared Antivirus Features
Panda Dome Advanced includes all the same features as Panda Dome Essential, naturally. I'll keep my summary here to a minimum; for more details, please read the earlier review.
I follow four testing labs around the world, closely tracking their reports on the effectiveness of antivirus utilities. Panda appears in the latest results from two such labs, which is good. About a third of the antiviruses I track have no lab scores, and another fifth of them appear in just one report.
In the latest report from SE Labs, Panda earns AAA certification, a feat accomplished by all the programs tested. With AV-Comparatives, Panda doesn’t do nearly as well. Out of the three tests I follow from this lab, it utterly failed two. I calculate an aggregate lab score for any antivirus with at least two test results. Panda’s is 7.5 of a possible 10, which is among the lowest. Bitdefender owns a perfect 10 aggregate score based on perfect scores from all four labs, while McAfee’s 10-point score comes from three of the four labs.
In my hands-on malware protection test, Panda detected 80% of the samples and scored 7.7 points, a poor showing. Malwarebytes Premium earned a near-perfect 9.8 points against the same set of samples.
Panda also missed over 80% of my hand-modified malware samples, including three-quarters of the ransomware items. When I launched those tweaked ransomware samples, more than half ran to completion without Panda blinking an eye, encrypting from dozens to thousands of files.
I also test each antivirus by launching a hundred URLs newly discovered to be hosting malware, giving equal credit if the antivirus blocks access to the dangerous page or eliminates the malware download. Safe Browsing, the Panda component that aims to fend off dangerous and fraudulent websites, isn't part of Panda Free Antivirus, so I wasn’t surprised when the free edition only scored 71% in this test. More concerning was my discovery that even with the help of Safe Browsing, Panda Dome Essential only reached 74%. A half-dozen competitors attained a perfect 100% in their own latest tests, among them McAfee, Norton, and Guardio.
Safe Browsing also aims to steer users away from phishing websites—fraudulent pages that try to steal login credentials by masquerading as sensitive websites. Over the last few years, Panda’s phishing protection scores have been bouncing like a yoyo—a yoyo with a long string. In my previous review, it achieved a dubious 71% detection rate, good only in comparison with its previous dreadful score of 46%. In the latest test, it's back down—all the way to 45%. Your browser alone can do better, and many antivirus utilities have done much better. Avast One, Norton Genie, and Trend Micro Internet Security are among those that scored 100% in their latest tests.
The free antivirus includes a few other security-related bonus features. USB Vaccination makes your USB drives invulnerable to autoplay malware infestation. A bootable antivirus Rescue Kit handles pernicious malware that keeps you from installing antivirus protection or entirely prevents booting Windows. And the new Dark Web Scanner scours the internet for any evidence that your email addresses have been compromised. For paying customers, this scanner goes on to monitor for any new exposures.
All programs in the current Panda line come with a VPN component that works on Windows, macOS, and Android. However, for all except the top-tier suite, the VPN comes with some serious limits. Specifically, users can't choose a VPN server location, and VPN usage is limited to 150MB per day.
It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure OnlinePanda Dome Essential adds quite a few security features beyond what you get for free. It comes with a simple firewall that proved mostly (but not entirely) resistant to direct attack. The Application Control allowlist system works much like PC Matic Home—once you enable it, no new programs, good or bad, can launch without your permission. Wi-Fi Protection goes beyond merely reporting that you've connected to a poorly secured hotspot and can identify other security flaws in the connection. It also lists all devices connected to your Wi-Fi network, with an option to ban any of them from communicating with your PC. And a virtual keyboard serves to foil any attempted data theft by keyloggers, be they hardware or software-based, to capture your passwords.
Panda Dome Advanced on Other Platforms
You can use your Panda Dome licenses to install Panda protection on Windows, macOS, or Android devices. With Panda Dome Essential for Mac, you get antivirus and a limited VPN, but little else. Worse, the Secure Browsing feature on the Mac is not working at present. My Panda contacts expect a fix in October.
Installed on Android, Panda features the expected antivirus scan and anti-theft features. You can lock specific apps behind a passcode, which is handy if you're prone to handing your phone to a fussy child. A privacy audit reports apps that have dangerous permissions. And you can use it as a call blocker.
But here's something to think about. Upgrading from Panda Dome Essential to Panda Dome Advanced gets you absolutely no upgrades on macOS or Android. You just pay 20% to 30% more per license for the same protection.
Simple Parental Control Content Filter
Not every consumer needs a parental control system, and not every parent feels the need to monitor or control their children’s online activities. In fact, we at PCMag no longer recommend that parents install third-party parental control and monitoring systems, suggesting instead that you rely on free offerings from the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
Not everyone will agree with this advice, of course. For those who do want a degree of control, getting it as part of a security suite is awfully convenient. Parental control is one of the features you get by upgrading from Panda Dome Essential to Advanced.
(Credit: Panda)To get started, simply turn on Parental Control for each child’s Windows user account. Doing so initiates monitoring of the websites visited by that account and the categories those websites match. If you want to limit access using content filtering, click the settings gear. You can now choose to allow or block any of about 120 website categories for each user. Note that filtering happens below the browser level. I confirmed this by testing with a totally off-brand browser that I wrote myself.
The number of categories has increased since my last review. That's a lot to think about, so Panda gives you the option to choose from several predefined filters: Kids, Teen, and Employee. You can also select no filtering, meaning Panda simply monitors the account or you can choose Custom and make your own choices.
(Credit: Panda)If you do make your own custom collection of categories, be sure to leave the Information Technology – Proxy Avoidance category blocked. If you don’t, a web-savvy kid could completely evade parental control using a secure anonymizing proxy. You can also set it to block uncategorized sites or put specific domains on a blocklist or allowlist.
I chose the Teen filter, logged into the corresponding account, and put the content filter through its paces. It successfully blocked every raunchy site I tried to visit. But it did even more, blocking access to shopping sites such as Victoria's Secret (flagged for Adult Material – Lingerie and Swimsuit), Amazon (flagged for Shopping), and various Google tracking pages (flagged for Productivity - Advertisements). In most cases, it replaced the inappropriate page with a warning, in much the way Safe Browsing warns about phishing pages. For secure HTTPS porn pages, it used a popup notification, leaving the browser to display an error message. In either case, it clearly indicated the reason the page was blocked.
(Credit: Panda)Back in the main Panda app, you can see a summary of activity for each user, including most visited websites, most visited categories, denied websites, and denied categories. Digging in, you can see all the pages and categories that were allowed and denied. That's it for parental control. There's no time scheduling, cross-platform coverage, social media tracking, or any other parental monitoring features. It's strictly a content filter.
(Credit: Panda)Data Shield and Anti-Ransomware
Different security companies take different approaches to ransomware protection. Some add a layer of behavior-based detection aimed specifically at the encryption activities used by ransomware. Others, Panda among them, prevent ransomware damage by controlling access to sensitive files. New since my last review, Panda can also deploy what it calls decoy files to help detect ransomware attacks and will optionally make shadow copies of important files to aid in recovery if ransomware breaks through.
(Credit: Panda)Data Shield is enabled out of the box, but you should still click the Settings gear to check its coverage. By default, it protects the contents of the Documents folder for each user. You’ll surely want to protect your Desktop, Music, and Pictures folders at a minimum. Review the file types to make sure they include everything that you care about. For example, text files aren't protected by default, nor are RTF (rich text format) files. In testing, I had no trouble adding folders belonging to my own user account. However, when I selected folders belonging to another account, my changes didn’t take. I had to log into each account to expand its protection.
Using a hand-coded text editor that’s guaranteed not to be on any allowlist, I verified that Panda detects even read-only access to protected files. When I responded to its query by clicking Deny, my text editor couldn’t load the file I selected. Panda also prevented my simple-minded ransomware simulator from making any changes.
(Credit: Panda)In an earlier test using hand-modified ransomware, Panda Dome Essential caught just a quarter of the samples. Most of the rest rampaged across the system, encrypting anywhere from dozens to thousands of files. For a view of the more powerful ransomware protection in Panda Dome Advanced, I carefully prepped a test system. I turned on the Decoy Files and Shadow Copies features and turned off regular antivirus protection. After detaching the test virtual machine from the internet, I proceeded to launch a dozen original, unmodified ransomware samples.
Panda’s ransomware-specific component totally missed the one full-disk encrypting sample, which makes sense, given that it focuses entirely on the much more common file-encrypting ransomware. Of the 11 remaining files, Panda neutralized six before they could do any harm. One managed to encrypt about 60 decoy files and 70 other files before Panda detected and neutralized it. Data Shield detected the rest, and I clicked Deny in each case.
(Credit: Panda / PCMag)In some cases, the ransomware encrypted a few hundred decoy files before Data Shield stopped it. I also found dozens of non-decoy files encrypted, but that doesn’t mean Data Shield failed. The encrypted files were all types that Data Shield hadn’t been told to protect, among them TXT, RTF, JSON, LOG, and EXE. This result does hammer home one point—you should look over the protected file types carefully and add any that are important to you.
This is a much better performance than when I last tested Panda’s ransomware protection. With the regular real-time antivirus turned off, Panda still fended off all my encrypting ransomware attacks. Just keep in mind that it only protects what you tell it to. Do pore over the settings and make sure all your important folders and file types are covered.
Inconsequential Performance Impact
If users feel their security suite is killing system performance, they're likely to slap the off switch. Fortunately, few modern suites have more than a minimal effect on performance. I do put each suite through some simple tests to make sure none of them revert to the resource-hogging days of yesteryear.
To protect your computer, a suite's security components must launch at startup, so there's potential for security to slow the Windows boot process. To check that possibility, I run a script that measures boot time, comparing results with and without the suite installed. Averaging multiple runs before and after installation of the suite gives me a view of a suite's impact. The physical test system took 4% longer to boot with Panda installed, which is nothing you’ll notice.
As noted above, Panda’s real-time scanning kicks in when files are moved or copied to a new location. That means it has the potential to slow down these and other common file activities. For another test, I use a script that moves and copies an eclectic collection of files between drives, averaging results before and after installing the suite. When last tested, Panda more than doubled the time required for this script to run. This time around, it slowed the process by a much more reasonable 13%. A second test that involves repeatedly zipping and unzipping the same collection of files took no longer under Panda’s protection.
Panda is back in the pack of security suites with a single-digit impact on performance, which is an improvement. Even so, there are a few suites that didn’t slow any of the three tests at all, most notably Webroot and Avira Internet Security.
You Can Do Better
To the numerous features of Panda Dome Essential, Panda Dome Advanced adds an effective ransomware protection system and limited parental control. On macOS and Android, it adds nothing at all, just a higher per-license price. The addition of Safe Browsing didn't improve much over Essential's poor protection against malicious URLs, and its phishing detection proved dismal. With Bitdefender Internet Security, by contrast, you get an even greater feature set anchored by antivirus protection that earns perfect scores from four independent labs. As our Editors’ Choice for entry-level security suites, Bitdefender is a better choice.
