How we test
Last updated 21 September 2026
Most review sites describe an elaborate testing process. Ours is deliberately modest, and we would rather tell you exactly what it is than imply a laboratory we do not have.
We do not run a malware laboratory. We do not execute live samples, we do not measure detection rates, and we do not benchmark performance. Any site that claims to do this properly needs a sample feed, isolated hardware and a repeatable method. We have none of those, so we publish no numbers of our own.
What our review process actually consists of
- Primary-source documentation review. We read the vendor’s product pages, feature lists, system requirements, terms of service, privacy policy, refund policy and support documentation, and we record the date we read them.
- Claim separation. Every claim is sorted into: confirmed by the vendor’s own documentation; confirmed by an independent third party; or unverified. The feature table in our review shows this split openly.
- Independent-lab search. We check AV-TEST and AV-Comparatives for current published results for the product. If we find one, we cite the lab, the test period and the method. If we find none, we say so and we publish no detection figure.
- Plausibility check against the platform. Some marketing claims are impossible on technical grounds — iOS file-scanning antivirus being the standard example. We flag these.
- Bundle and pricing structure check. We establish what tier actually contains the product, and whether it is sold standalone. This is where most write-ups go wrong.
- Dated publication. The article carries a date and is presented as a snapshot, not a permanent truth.
What we will never publish
- A detection percentage we did not obtain from a named laboratory test.
- A scan duration, boot-time delay or memory figure, because these depend on your hardware and data.
- A price, except to say that prices change and where to look them up.
- A star rating or a numeric score. We have no methodology that would make one meaningful, so we do not manufacture one.
- A personal anecdote presented as evidence.
Where to get the numbers we cannot give you
- AV-TEST Institute — protection, performance and usability scores, updated on a regular cycle, with methodology published.
- AV-Comparatives — real-world protection tests, malware protection tests and performance tests, with full reports as PDFs.
- The vendor’s own trial or refund window, which lets you measure performance on your machine, which is the only measurement that applies to you.
Conflicts of interest
radovin.online earns affiliate commission on some of the products it writes about. That relationship is disclosed at the top of every page, immediately under every headline and next to every commercial link. It does not change what our checks find or what we publish. See the advertiser-independence section of our editorial policy.