Impression / feedback on Windows protection

So I installed the Prime + Phantom some time ago and thought it's noticeably changed with years.

Just to give an idea - have a very good memory of Avira dated somewhere 2005-2012 and it was practically the best solution back then (lightweight + detection). Stopped using seems because the most important threats became 0-day and rootkits and while Avira was the best scanner, the scanning approach itself outdated. Nowadays it's possibly same - scanning is close to not worthy of Memory and CPU and Updates while behavioural and dynamic analysis focused on 0-day is the main criteria.

At 2009 my feeling of Avira 9.5/10, mainly because:

+ fast, lightweight

+ best results on all range of threat catch competition challenges (0-day, wild, etc). That was the combined feeling of multiple competitions in multiple years, not one specific random check.

Impression of 2024 trial test was: Prime 4/10, Phantom 8/10. This post is only about Prime:

- no installation options to install only specific parts of protection (exactly same as Windows, when you see an XBox service floating in your system which never ever touch an XBox, this is instant bad bloatware rating; Windows is alive only because it has no competition)

- Same as previous, Prime interface is heavily bloated with tools which advanced user would never install (optimizer, etc). Usually good design is modular one both in interface and in files. And unfortunately if a company spent time and resources into optimizer, for me it means that these resources were not spent on 0-day vulnerabilities.

- Seems even when all services were disabled, there were still memory consuming processes active. Some people don't want any scanners enabled, others may want to use only a firewall.

- Interface is clearly slow and sometimes freezes due to both blocked network and probably just because it uses heavy framework. Even compared to other applications with skins.

Again, have a very good memory of old Avira and thinking about buying Phantom (tough rather costly for my region), but definitely will not use current Prime. Wish you only to get back and improve.