Emsisoft has two antivirus engines — the first is a proprietary scanner which uses predictive algorithms to flag potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) and suspicious files, and the second is Bitdefender’s award-winning anti-malware engine. This dual-engine antivirus scanner is powerful — Emsisoft detected 100% of viruses, rootkits, trojans, spyware, and ransomware in my testing, with fewer false positives than McAfee.
Quick Scan. Analyzes files that are actively running. The Quick Scan took just over 2 minutes on my PC and scanned over 64,000 objects — which is amazingly fast.
Malware Scan. Checks the parts of your PC where malware usually hides, like downloads, system registries, and cached files. It took around 90 minutes on my computer, which is pretty good — Avast took over 2 hours and missed many of the files that Emsisoft was able to catch.
Custom Scan. Allows you to select which folders to scan with three levels of intensity: Default, Thorough, and Paranoid. I found the Thorough and Paranoid settings to be too vigilant, giving me lots of false positives on different executable files I had intentionally downloaded, but that level of security could be useful for users with a need for intense security. The default Custom Scan analyzed every file on my disk drive — it’s the most comprehensive scan available, and it took about 2 hours on my machine, catching all of the zipped malware files that I had hidden around my drive.