Review of Sophos Home Premium

This is my third review in a row (in a matter of three months) of different antivirus applications. Following my trials and reviews of Kaspersky and Bitdefender, I decided to try out Sophos this month. One of my chief reasons for trying out Sophos is because of the gushing praise provided by The PC Security Channel, a channel on YouTube I generally enjoy for his objective reviews of antivirus software. Reviews such as this and this more recent video. Overall, TPSC demonstrates that Sophos is a very thorough and reliable antivirus solution. I trust Leo's reviews and so I wanted to try this out myself using the trial provided at their site. This blog post covers my experience using Sophos for the month so far.

Sophos Application

Given the super strong feedback from TPSC, I was strongly looking forward to Sophos and perhaps this set up a lot of strong expectations for the application. While Kaspersky and Bitdefender seemed relatively similar to one another, Sophos was drastically different.

A Cloud Based Approach

All antivirus solutions I've used up until now have had local clients installed on the PC I'm using, with all the controls and settings manipulated directly via those clients. Refer back to my prior reviews for Kaspersky and Bitdefender to see screenshots I've included of those settings and controls. Sophos is entirely different: it does have a client on the PC, but all settings are controlled via the browser. Seen below is a screenshot of the Sophos dashboard as seen in the client on the PC.

Seen below is a screenshot from the Sophos controls in the browser, accessible via clicking "My Activity" in the dashboard above (this is a cropped screenshot within a browser tab even though it may not look that way).

In this way, Sophos is pretty much a cloud-based solution, where all controls are accessible from a browser. This definitely has benefits. It means you can log into your account from any browser (and any device) and view and modify Sophos's settings. You can also remotely run a scan and view the result of prior scans, again from anywhere you wish.

A major benefit of this choice is that you can install Sophos on any family member's device and help ensure they are protected. This is especially true if you are a more tech savvy member of the family but the rest of your family don't have much time or desire to protect their devices properly (or might not even know how to). I think this scenario is where Sophos really shines. It certainly helps that it has incredibly strong malware detection and prevention. It also helps that Sophos allows for installation on up to 10 (!!) devices. That's really impressive, considering other offerings allow for installation on up to 3 or, at most, 5 devices at the same price point.

The local client doesn't provide much in the way of options. It does have a button for scanning, as it should, but aside from that all the options are effectively links to the browser where you control Sophos. The two primary links are "My Activity" (which goes to the dashboard indicated above) and "Settings" which directs you to a page to control the settings. All the other options such as "Add Device" and "Share Sophos" aren't related to controlling the Sophos instance on the device. Lastly, the row of icons provide links to specific settings on the Settings page (actually named "Protection" tab in the browser destination).

Settings

As mentioned above, all settings are controlled in the browser. This is certainly convenient for remotely monitoring and controlling your device(s). But this adds an unnecessary amount of latency to actually achieving your goals. If you have direct access to the computer you're interested in affecting, which I'd warrant is true for most people, then the additional delay having a page opened in the browser (and in some cases waiting for the browser to start up first) will feel unnecessary. I can only imagine this being truly useful for management of a large fleet of devices, perhaps in a corporate setting, or perhaps, as mentioned above, in the case where a tech savvy family member is managing the security for the rest of the family.

Clicking the "Settings" option on the dashboard takes the user to the page below.

The page has a number of sub tabs ("General", "Exploits", "Ransomware", "Web"), each with their own settings:

It looks like there's a fair amount of settings to filter for, which is useful for sure, but in my experience I didn't see any reason to change the default settings.

Scanning

While Sophos does a great job of running in the background, you may want to run a manual scan every once in a while. This is possible via the "Scan" button on the client dashboard. You can also scan specific files/folders on your PC by right-clicking the folder/file and selecting "Scan with Sophos Home" on the context menu that shows up. You can even select the "Clean" option from the Web interface to initiate a scan. Any of these options will result in a "scan in progress" dialog to show up on the PC as seen in the screenshot below.

Here I will highlight one of my large annoyances with Sophos: the scan is quite slow. The screenshot above shows that the scan progress is at 0%. It was actually at 0% for several minutes and I had ample time to take the screenshot since it didn't update with new values for quite some time. I consider this a major failing of the product. It takes too long to update and so doesn't give any confidence it's doing anything. I suspect a lot of this may have to do with the fact that everything is controlled via the Cloud and the progress of scanning needs to thus be reported and accessible via the browser as well.

I'd go as far as to say that "slow" is a great way to sum up a lot of my experience with Sophos. Not only is scanning slow (to both indicate progress and to complete) but so is accessing anything to do with the product such as viewing and modifying settings (requires starting up a browser tab). I've also noticed that my computer takes a considerably longer time to start up now than it used to in the past. I'm also fairly sure my computer is running slower than before and that applications take longer to start up than they used to. I suspect Sophos is being super careful and verifying all application activity, all files being opened/accessed, etc. I suppose the tradeoff may be acceptable if it means I'll never get hit by malware, but honestly I feel like the performance impact is frankly unacceptable, especially when I compare it to Kaspersky and Bitdefender, both of which are also considered excellent anti-malware solutions.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Excellent anti-malware defenses. Great reviews from The PC Security Channel.
• Great for those that are not tech-savvy and just want a top-class antivirus solution that works (and works very well!).
• Also great for those that are tech-savvy and wish to install an antivirus solution for the rest of the family. Since it's possible to monitor results remotely through the cloud/browser, it's very convenient to ensure your family is safe.
• Allows for installation on up to 10 devices. This is quite generous given that Sophos is at a similar price point to other offerings such as Kaspersky and Bitdefender.

Cons:

• Lack of any tools beyond just anti-malware defense. These extra tools aren't necessary, honestly, but I did get a bit spoiled with some of the bells-and-whistles that come with Bitdefender and Kaspersky such as checking for outdated software. It also would have been nice to have a firewall provided to replace the default that comes with Windows.
• Very noticeable system slow down ever since I started using Sophos. This is actually a deal breaker for me. I just can't keep using a product that's going to slow down my computer this much. I've noticed that my system start up now takes several minutes longer. It's just terrible.
• Slow scans, especially slow to initiate scans. Perhaps this is more to do with the fact that everything is controlled remotely.
• In a related comment to the above the interface feels very sluggish.
• No easy way to see how many days are left in the trial. It wasn't until recently that the interface was updated to indicate I had only a few days left in the trial. I suppose this could go both ways since I was fairly critical in my review of Kaspersky for notifying me on a daily basis that I'm using a trial version of the product and should purchase the full version. While I appreciate that Sophos is not pushing me to purchase the full version, it would still be great to have somewhere to go to see how many days I have left in the trial.
• I found it was hard to get any information on how to effectively use the product and the product came across as being fairly unintuitive. In some ways I can see how this might even be a benefit: in the case that this is being installed on a less tech savvy person's machine, having it be difficult to access and modify settings may actually be useful to prevent undesired changes.
• Really unclear what I as a user am expected to be receiving with the package and what I can do. For example, it's clear that a version of Hitman Pro.Alert is installed and running in the background as a background service. This gave me the impression that Hitman Pro was installed and I could run Hitman Pro scans from time to time. This isn't the case, it seems, and I can't find any way to initiate Hitman Pro manually. I'm now of the opinion it's not possible, but again this is confusing.

Conclusion

As you may be able to tell from my disproportionately higher cons than pros detailed above, I am not that fond of my experience using Sophos. It might be an impeccable anti-malware solution, but the sluggishness, lack of features, and unintuitiveness of the product have left me with a desire to go back to either Kaspersky or Bitdefender. I can absolutely see the value of this as a solution for installing on other family members' computers, especially if they are less tech savvy than you. But since I consider myself reasonably tech savvy, I just don't see any benefit of using this myself. I'd also add that I'd probably want to ensure my family members have reasonably powerful machines before subjecting them to the sluggishness of Sophos.

In conclusion, I would not recommend Sophos Home. At least not as long as it continues to exhibit the experience described in this review.