Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 13.1

While the Free and PRO versions of this IObit product are more focused on improving the performance of your PC, keeping it clean from unwanted files, and providing some basic antivirus protection, Advanced SystemCare Ultimate has been designed to deal mainly with protection issues.

Still, it also includes most – if not all – of its siblings’ cleaning and management capabilities.

Though placed in the IObit’s website as part of the Protection tools section – rather than in the PC Clean menu, where you’ll find the other versions of the program – the Ultimate version is still a discreet protection tool when it comes to blocking new viruses, suspicious sites, etc. I am not too sure that it can replace any of the tools out there devoted almost exclusively to protecting your computer of all kinds of threats. To me, this IObit tool is still an excellent PC management tool, full of interesting features and tools, and with a noticeable boost on the threat detection area, especially in the real-time protection feature and the new e-mail protection engine (in terms of suspicious senders, links, spam, and phishing scams). Its use of the Bitdefender engine makes it, at least, worth trying, though it fails occasionally at detecting online threats in suspicious-looking websites.

As for the rest of the program’s functionality, nothing has changed much in terms of interface and in the catalog of tools and features that it offers. The sections that you may find in other versions of the program are still there, namely Care (to perform a deep clean-up of your PC), Speed Up, Toolbox (with a new Context Menu Manager and a File Shredder), Software Updater, and the well-known Action Center with an option to download and install other IObit tools.

The Antivirus section has been placed first giving it a predominance that fits the main purpose of this new version of the program. It offers three types of scan – Quick, Full, and Custom – which will search for all kinds of threats that may be already present on your PC. What I loved about this scans is that, unlike many other antivirus tools that try to lure you to buy their products no matter what, it does not present you with hundreds of potential (and usually non-existent) threats. I knew that my laptop was clean, and that is what the scan results provided, which was really reassuring. Real-time protection is also available, as well as specific algorithms to detect threats on your incoming e-mails and the pages you visit, always with the limitations mentioned above.

IObit offers a neat range of other protection tools that have been in the market for quite a while now, such as Malware Fighter, and that have attracted excellent reviews over the years. This new Ultimate edition of its reputed PC cleaner with a stronger emphasis on security looks to me like a hybrid between the former and Advanced SystemCare, which I am not too sure may work as efficiently as those tools certainly do on their own.