Eset Home Security Premium review: Simple protection, complex heart

Price When Reviewed

$59.99

Best Prices Today: ESET Security Premium

When we last reviewed Eset Home Security Premium, it had a different name. Officially it did, anyway. Despite the update, the antivirus suite formerly known as Eset Smart Security Premium is still called the very same in the app – and has kept its fundamentals, too.

Those core qualities start with good threat protection and an easy-to-use password manager. They include enough advanced settings to potentially satisfy power users, too. In fact, if you like your apps to have less handholding and more digging around, Eset could be perfect for you…so long as you can forgive some features for not living up to their hype.

See our roundup of the best antivirus software chart to learn about competing products.

What does Eset Home Security Premium include? 

As with other security suites, Eset Home Security Premium’s antivirus and firewall serve as the key fundamentals of the app. Together, they shield your PC from malware (including ransomware), suspicious websites and downloads, and potential network attacks. The software also can scan for vulnerable networks, thwart unauthorized use of your webcam, and block dangerous email attachments. Parental controls and a password manager are available, too.

However, unlike similarly priced rivals, Home Security Premium is more sparse with its ancillary protections. You get safeguards for browsing sessions (like for banking) and a data encryption tool, as well as an anti-theft feature to help locate lost or stolen devices. No identity protections (like dark web scanning) come with the Home Security Premium plan — you must upgrade to Eset Home Security Ultimate to get those.

Instead Eset’s mid-tier plan leans more heavily toward PC utilities. These focus on Windows performance — they monitor system changes, provide information on active Windows processes and network connections, help troubleshoot Windows issues, and check what devices are connected to your network.

How much does Eset Home Security Premium cost? 

When you buy a subscription directly through Eset, you can cover the exact number of devices you want (up to 10). The price starts at £45.99/$59.99 for just one device, then increases in £5/$5 increments. Covered devices must run Windows, macOS, or Android — iOS is not supported.

Licenses purchased through Eset come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and are automatically enrolled in auto-renewal. You can stack together the company’s 30-day free trial with the return policy. 

• 3-device plan: £54.98/$69.99 for the first year 
• 5-device plan: £64.99/$79.99 for the first year 
• 10-device plan: £89.99/$104.99 for the first year 

Eset’s prices are the subscriptions’ list cost, but the company also caveats them as for “the first term only.” In other words, don’t expect to get a rate lock on what you pay. Customers will receive information for the next year’s subscription cost only 30 days before renewal; any price increases are communicated then.

For a discount, Eset offers 15% off when signing up for a two-year term, and 20% off when signing up for a three-year term. 

Key features of Eset Home Security Premium

Installation and user interface 

After installation, Eset Home Security Premium drops you into the Overview tab, which is the software’s dashboard. For its look, the default is a dark theme, but you can click an icon at the top right of the window to switch to a light theme or match your system settings.

In dark mode, the interface is mostly gray with black tiles and green status bar (if all’s well on your PC). A set of seven tabs on the left let you jump to the dashboard, start a scan, update Eset Home Security Premium, use the app’s tools, dive into settings, get help, or go to the web portal for additional settings and features. The app can be resized to fit your window (or any dimension you want) — a rarity among antivirus software.

On a surface level, these categories feel logical, but some organization decisions can feel unintuitive. For example, parental controls are tucked within Setup > Internet protection — and they’re off by default. The overview tab also strangely lacks a tile that would let you start a scan. If you’re used to a more straightforward layout, Eset’s app won’t feel natural to use until you’ve fully clicked around and familiarized yourself.

Tabs vary in their feature density. Computer Scan has just three options: scanning the local disks on your PC, starting an advanced scan (which includes a custom option), or dragging and dropping files to check them out. Scan-related notifications appear in this window as well.

Meanwhile, Tools and Setup are more dense. Features appear as text entries sorted into groups, rather than as tiles. Advanced settings (called Advanced setup) are a maze of toggle switches, too. Power users will enjoy the control, but users who want a simple experience will likely get lost among the options — even with the handy tooltip explanations. The vibe is that of a home wired for its own server room: You first see just the installed ethernet wall ports and perhaps a piece of networking equipment, but if you’re willing to look, a complex setup lives inside a cramped closet down the hall.

In addition to the desktop app, Eset Home Security Premium ties into the company’s web portal, which you’ll use to manage your account and password manager users. The anti-theft tools live here too, as do the parental control activity logs for your children’s devices.

Virus, malware, and threat protection 

Real-time protection

Eset Home Security Premium scans continuously for real-time threats on your PC and when you’re online. It checks files on your local hard drive and any removable media for malware and spam, including email downloaded to Windows Mail, Microsoft Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird. The software also monitors webpages for dangerous files and phishing attempts, as well as suspicious network activity going to and from the internet. 

Unlike similar rival plans, Eset Home Security Premium doesn’t let you limit app access to the internet or specific files as extra protection. It only automatically screens for unusual behavior. And as mentioned above, the Home Security Premium subscription doesn’t include data breach tracking, either — you must step up to the Ultimate tier for identity protections.

Scheduled scans

Right after installation, Eset performs an initial full-system scan. Its settings also include a system startup file check as part of the default scheduled tasks. However, the app primarily relies on real-time scanning as the primary method of catching threats. You must create your own scheduled scans to proactively screen your system.

To schedule a scan, you’ll head to Tool > Scheduler, click on the Add task button, and choose On-demand computer scan. When configuring the scan, you’ll schedule its time (once, repeatedly, daily, weekly, or based on an event trigger), then its behavior (like if it runs when a laptop is on battery). 

Next, you’ll select the scan depth — a smart scan, context menu scan, in-depth scan, or computer scan. Smart scans skip files previously marked as clean and not since modified. Context menu scans trigger a user-defined scanning profile when checking a file or folder using the Windows context menu. In-depth scans dig into every file on your system, regardless of previous scan results. Computer scans automatically choose your PC’s local drives to scan.

The parts of your PC that can be scanned (including hidden areas) change with the default scan option chosen — and you can pick exactly where to probe. If you want to create a scan that only checks places like the operating memory, boot sectors/UEFI, WMI database, or system registry, that’s possible. So is checking only a network location, a local drive or set of folders, or a combination of all areas.

Still not enough granularity? You can dig into Eset Home Security Premium’s Advanced Setup — if you want to tinker with how aggressive the scans are, you can.

Manual scans

For manual scans, you can only choose between a computer scan (examines the local drives on your PC), a custom scan (lets you select scan depth and the areas checked), a removable media scan, or repeating the last scan. You can also drag and drop folders or files into the window to scan them.

Related, you can also submit files of unknown or dubious origin through the app to the Eset labs for further analysis.

Firewall

Eset replaces Windows’ built-in firewall with its own defenses, taking over the screening of all your PC’s inbound and outbound traffic. While simpler than Windows’ multiple interfaces for settings, you’ll have to dive into Home Security Premium’s advanced setup to change the firewall rules. 

If that sounds like your idea of a good time (no sarcasm), you can get quite granular with custom rules. But for typical users of third-party antivirus software, the Eset defaults should be sufficient.

Additional notable features 

Anti-theft 

The anti-theft tool is designed to locate a stolen device. On PC, the app will take several steps if marked as stolen in the Eset web portal — it will grab screenshots of the screen and take photos through the webcam, as well as location info. You can also set up a “phantom” account, which becomes the only active account when someone filches your PC, as well as review activity logs.

In practice, this tool isn’t as effective as you’d hope. A webcam can be covered with tape, for starters. The phantom account is useless if your Windows accounts aren’t secured with passwords. While that’s harder to do nowadays in Windows 11, it’s not impossible. Eset’s app can’t accurately tell when a Windows account isn’t password protected, either—and so you don’t get the warning you should. On a local Windows account with set up with a blank password field, Eset still counted the account as secured. (Tapping the enter key to log in is not secure, for the record.) The app also couldn’t always capture the IP address of the test PC — and IP addresses aren’t always an accurate reflection of someone’s true location.

Browser extensions

Eset promotes its free Browser Privacy & Security extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge as an additional way to stay safe online — you can use it to get visual badges for good search results, clean up your browsing history, and wipe metadata from images you upload.

But on one PC, I couldn’t get the extension to behave properly in Chrome — a possible conflict with an already-installed ad-blocker extension. It couldn’t connect with Eset’s servers. The same extension worked fine on the test PC used to review the app within Edge, however.

Parental control

Eset Home Security Premium includes parental controls — both for computers and Android phones. On a PC,…