ESET Home Security Premium Review: It does the job, but there are still bugs

Sometimes an app can take care of the big picture items, but shoot itself in both feet by forgoing the smaller things. Also, a year of development can take care of one major issue, but still leave others unresolved. This is the case with ESET Home Security (available in Essential, Premium, and Ultimate configurations), developed by Slovakian software company ESET, a long-standing entity in the software security world.

ESET Home Security Premium offers extensive antiviral and malware protection, Real-time File System Protection, a password manager, an encryption tool, and other features. The software downloads and installs cleanly from ESET’s website, and it’s easy enough to set up a 30-day trial with only an email address and no credit or debit card needed. To see how ESET compares to other Mac Antivirus suites in our round up of the Best Antivirus for Mac.

The software downloads and installs cleanly from ESET’s website, and it’s easy enough to set up a 30-day trial with only an email address and no credit or debit card needed. 

ESET Home Security Premium retails at different price points given the number of devices it’s installed on and the number of years you’ve subscribed for $59.99/£44.99 for one device for one year, and scaling up from there (the pricing options can be found on ESET’s website. Note that the deals change regularly and at the time of writing the U.K. had a reduction to £39.99, see more Antivirus for Mac deals.

Among the devices covered are Macs, PCs, and other smartphones and tablets. You can apparently download the ESET Home app from the Mac App Store, according to ESET, but we haven’t been able to find it there. There is an ESET Home app available for iPhone and iPad on the iOS App Store though.

Once the software is installed, permissions have been assigned to allow its background functions to occur within macOS, allow for third-party extensions to be enabled on Apple Silicon M1, M2, M3, or M4-based Macs, grant full access to the entire hard drive, and you’re off to the races.

Head over to the Settings menu on a Mac and there’s a considerable amount that can be done. The application allows for changes such as blacklists and whitelists to be created, different levels of detection and sensitivity, access to the logs and proxy servers, reactions as to new volumes being mounted, and an impressive level of customization. 

Foundry

Scheduled scans can be set up easily, and it’s fairly simple to designate which areas of a local or cloud-based drive will be scanned and when. Updated software versions can also be manually rolled back as needed and a  “Submit a Sample” feature allows you to send along suspect files for ESET to study on their end, which is interesting. 

Where actual virus and malware-based protection is concerned, this becomes a mixed bag, though the software holds its own. Between macOS’ GateKeeper feature and ESET’s protection layers, there wasn’t much malware that could be installed when we tried, and ESET’s initial scan was able to locate and quarantine suspect files without accolades to what it had done or incident.

ESET Home Security Premium handily quarantined suspect files as they arose, and while it let the tricky AdWind malware and a fake copy of Adobe Flash Player through, it was able to stop the lion’s share of suspect software in its tracks.

Foundry

Some bugs have been fixed since last year’s review, and drive scan times have improved noticeably, while the scheduler feature now activates scans as promised. A lack of a progress bar or elapsed time readout during a scan is annoying, but the software now uninstalls correctly.

The Password Manager feature is still only available via an app downloaded through the Mac App Store, the encryption features still seem to be missing.

To its credit, it’s easy enough to scan a target volume, perform background tasks during a scan, and customize settings to where you’d like them to be, but when critical elements of the advertised software seem to be missing, then it’s time for the developers to genuinely slam their brains against their desks and look over what’s been advertised and what’s been delivered.

ESET’s phishing protection seems to be minimal, as the software allowed me to visit questionable websites linked to the suspect/phishing emails that pile up in my Gmail’s Junk folder without any warning.

Foundry

See how ESET Home Security Premium compares to other antivirus apps in our roundup of the best Antivirus software for Mac.

Buying Avice

While ESET Home Security Premium completes its primary task of antiviral and malware prevention, several bugs still need to be fixed. Yes, there’s an excellent level of customization, and scan speeds have improved. But when when features like the Scheduler or phishing protection don’t seem to work and key features such as the promised password manager and encryption tool are missing, alarm bells should be ringing and the company needs to place some focus on the Mac version of their business, go through the checklist, and see if the product truly delivers what’s been advertised.

Is this worth a free 30-day trial? Of course, and you’re more than welcome to take it for a spin. Still, other applications do it better, without the bugs and the headaches, and they’re more worthy of your time, attention, and annual subscription fee.