Trend Micro’s malware scanner and real-time protection are excellent, and the program has some good privacy features that help improve online and offline security.

That said, Trend Micro’s additional features aren’t as good as what you get with most of the top antiviruses on the market. Various issues and design choices make it frustrating to set up across multiple devices. Additionally, some of the extras are missing fairly standard features. That said, its core features perform well, and there’s a good selection of plans to meet various needs.

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Trend Micro Plans & Pricing — Great Value for All Devices (+ Free Extras)

Trend Micro offers 5 different plans on 1-year subscriptions:

• Antivirus+ Security.
• Antivirus for Mac.
• Internet Security.
• Maximum Security.
• Premium Security Suite.

Trend Micro doesn’t have a free plan, although it does offer a few free features, such as an online security scan, a spam call and text blocker, a performance booster, and an on-demand virus scanner. You can try Trend Micro by taking advantage of its 30-day free trials or 30-day money-back guarantee.

Here’s a quick overview of each plan:

Antivirus+ Security — Basic Paid Plan

Antivirus for Mac — Solid Protection for Macs

Internet Security — Advanced PC Protection

Maximum Security — Advanced Multi-Device Plan

Premium Security Suite — Premium Identity Theft Protections

Trend Micro Security Features — Comprehensive Protections

Virus Scanner — Excellent Detection Rate + High Level of Customization

Trend Micro’s virus scanner provides excellent malware detection, combining signature-based scanning and machine learning. It can protect against known malware, zero-day threats, and variants that can bypass traditional malware scanners.

Trend Micro provides 3 scan options:

• Quick Scan (Smart Scan on Mac). Scans areas of your computer where security risks are typically found, such as system folders, background processes, and the registry.
• Full Scan. Scans the entire disk (not including password-protected or encrypted files).
• Custom Scan. Scans files or folders of your choice.

To test the different scan options, I downloaded a huge malware sample archive containing viruses, worms, ransomware, and more. I hid all the samples in different locations, ensuring some went into my system folders and registry.

Trend Micro’s quick scan took 1 minute on my PC and 14 minutes on my MacBook, which is pretty impressive, and identified every malicious sample in my critical folders.

Next, I ran Trend Micro’s full scan, which took just 40 minutes on my PC, which was faster than McAfee. It detected almost all of the malware on my disk, which is pretty great (though not quite as good as Norton). My computer speeds weren’t affected while running the scan, either — I could still stream HD video! I didn’t experience many false positives, but if you do, you can whitelist files in as few as 3 clicks.

The antivirus scanner was slower on Mac, though, taking 1 hour and 37 minutes to complete a full scan. That’s noteworthy since my Mac is a newer machine with fewer files than my PC. In the end, Trend Micro found and resolved almost all of the malware files I had earlier downloaded and hidden on the Mac.

The scanner comes with several other helpful options. You can adjust the protection sensitivity, change the notification settings, make it so Trend Micro automatically deletes unsafe files and PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), or deactivate the machine-learning aspect of the scanner.

Trend Micro’s malware scanner is fast, powerful, and doesn’t hog system resources. While its detection rates aren’t quite perfect, they’re close. Plus, its scanner is quicker than other antiviruses, such as VIPRE, and it includes convenient settings to fine-tune your antivirus experience.

Real-Time Protection — Better Than the Malware Scanner

Trend Micro’s real-time malware protection is basic but effective. It monitors your activity on the web and stops you from downloading malicious files or attachments. It also monitors files you’ve already downloaded and blocks them from making changes on your computer. Similar to Bitdefender, it’s pretty customizable, with options to scan USBs when plugged in, compressed files, and more.

The real-time protection performed even better than the scanner in my tests. I attempted to redownload the same malware archive to test it out. Trend Micro’s real-time scanner detected every single threat, protecting every computer I tested it on.

However, Trend Micro’s real-time protection didn’t initially stop me from downloading compressed malicious files. I tested this using Google Chrome and Safari, but the results were the same. You can solve this on PC by setting the antivirus to scan compressed files in real-time, but there’s no similar option for Mac users.

In any case, Trend Micro detected and quarantined compressed malware files as soon as I tried opening them. I also tested Trend Micro’s real-time protection against web-based exploits, and I was impressed that Trend Micro blocked all of the exploit attacks before they could target my browser and plugins.

Overall, Trend Micro’s real-time protection is effective at preventing malicious files from running on your PC.

Phishing / Web Protection — Blocks Most Websites + Easy Whitelisting

Trend Micro’s web protection is very good at blocking malicious and fraudulent websites. It does this by automatically comparing every site you visit with an online database of blacklisted sites. Trend Micro will block access if the site appears in the database.

I tested the protection on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. I visited hundreds of sample phishing sites, and Trend Micro blocked access most of the time. It even blocked access to websites that the default protections on Chrome and Firefox missed. Only a few malicious sites made it through in my tests. While it’s still much better than Chrome, it’s not the best. Norton 360’s web protection performed better, for example.

I quite like Toolbar, Trend Micro’s feature-rich browser extension. In addition to blocking dangerous sites and exploits, it’s also an ad blocker. When I added it to Chrome, I was impressed that it scans links as you hover over them. Search results are color-coded based on risk, which is nice. Finally, Toolbar comes with a tool you can use to quickly maximize your privacy settings on social media sites.

Next up is Pay Guard, Trend Micro’s secure browser. I was able to make it so Pay Guard automatically opened whenever I went to my bank’s website or Amazon. It uses sandboxing to add protection when you’re dealing with sensitive information. There’s even a setting called Data Theft Prevention that you can use to prevent things like credit card numbers from being entered onto sites.

I also really like how easy it is to whitelist safe sites. Trend Micro opens a dialogue box every time it blocks a website, with the option to ignore the block or whitelist the site.

Overall, I was impressed with Trend Micro’s web protection tools. It’s easy to use and blocks most phishing sites in my tests.

Optimization Tools — Multi-Functional Tools for Cleaning Devices

Trend Micro has optimization tools for both PCs and Macs. Starting with the former, PC Health Check-Up can optimize your PC in 5 ways:

• Fix Security Vulnerabilities. Check if your OS is up to date and if the computer’s firewall settings are secure.
• Remove Potentially Incompatible Programs. Uninstall programs that aren’t compatible with Trend Micro.
• Reduce Computer Startup Time. Manage which programs boot up when you log into your PC.
• Restore Disk Space. Empties the recycle bin, deletes duplicate files, and cleans temporary folders.
• Clean Privacy Data. Removes personal data from web browsers, Windows, messenger applications, and media players.

I wasn’t too impressed with these tools. The PC Health Check-Up took just a few seconds to scan my computer, but it couldn’t save me any space. After that, I used the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup app, which found almost 1 GB of junk to remove!

The Reduce Computer Startup Time feature highlights programs you can disable from launching at startup to improve your speeds. But this is available in Windows by default, so it doesn’t add much value to the tune-up feature.

If you have a Mac, you can use the Cleaner Pro tool. It’s also available on Windows, but PC Health Checkup has more features, so there isn’t much point in downloading it. In any case, it’s a standalone tool that manages RAM, but I didn’t notice any improvements in performance while using it.

While the inclusion of optimization tools is a nice plus, I wasn’t impressed with most of them as they aren’t as good as what you get with TotalAV or Avira.

Privacy Scanner — Protect Your Personal Information & Social Media Accounts

Trend Micro’s Privacy Scanner, accessible via the Toolbar extension and desktop app, has various tools to promote privacy. For example, it allows you to adjust your web browser and social media privacy settings.