Editors’ Note, July 8, 2024: In early 2022, Airo’s website went dark. Repeated attempts by PCMag and international antivirus labs to contact the company have gone unanswered. Since you can’t purchase this product, we have removed our rating, but you can read our most recent review below.
The proliferation of cross-platform security suite products has resulted in a Mac antivirus boom, as each vendor wants to promise protection on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. Few companies focus specifically on macOS, and even fewer new Mac-specific products show up. It's refreshing, therefore, to see the arrival of Airo Antivirus for Mac on the market. This newcomer earned some impressive lab scores, and its attractive, lightweight design should appeal to Mac enthusiasts. However, it's on the expensive side, and not all components are working yet as of this writing.
Pricing and OS Support
You pay $49.99 per year for a single Airo license. Upping that to $69.99 gets you three licenses, and $89.99 brings the total to five. Originally I reported prices of $69.99, $99.99, and $129.99, since these were visible (though struck out) on the pricing page. My company contact pointed out that those prices are never used, and proved it by removing them from the pricing page. I'm glad; the product looked rather expensive before that fix.
Intego costs $99.99 for three licenses, while ClamXAV (for Mac) costs just $29.99 for three. Like Airo, Intego and ClamXAV are specific to the macOS platform. In the cross-platform realm, you get five Norton licenses for $99.99, along with five no-limits licenses for Norton's VPN.
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Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac
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Malwarebytes Premium Security for Mac
McAfee Total Protection for Mac
Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus for Mac
Webroot Antivirus for Mac
You can try Airo for a week at no cost, with no need to give any personal details. That's a nice touch, but a few macOS antivirus products are entirely free. You don't have to pay a thing to protect your Mac with Avira, Avast, or Sophos. Even ignoring these free options, Airo is on the high side, price-wise. The most common price-point for a single license is $39.99; that's what you pay for Bitdefender, Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac, ESET, Trend Micro, and Webroot.
Between $45 and $65 for three licenses is another sweet spot; Bitdefender, ESET, Kaspersky, ProtectWorks, Vipre, and Webroot all fall in that range. And for $59.99 per year, McAfee AntiVirus Plus (for Mac) lets you install protection on every Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS device in your household.
It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
Like Avira, Sophos, and Vipre, Airo supports macOS versions 10.11 (El Capitan) and later. Trend Micro really wants you up to date; it only supports 10.13 (High Sierra) and later. If legacy software or antique hardware requires you to stay with an old macOS version, you might consider ProtectWorks AntiVirus (for Mac) or ClamXAV, both of which go all the way back to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Webroot also handles dated systems, with support back to 10.7 (Lion).
Getting Started With Airo
Once you've purchased your license and created your Airo account, you simply download and install the product. It quickly grabs the latest build from Airo's servers. The installer walks you through granting necessary permissions, such as full disk access to remove malware, and it offers to explain why it needs each permission. It also offers to add phishing protection to your browser. When the installer has finished, it cheerily announces, "All is good in the world. Airo has been installed."
Airo aims for a light footprint. It doesn't appear in the dock. Rather, you pull down its distinctive tall, skinny window from its icon in the menu bar at top whenever you need it. The main Status page just reports on the latest scan and latest update, with a big button to launch a scan. A Threats page lets you review malware threats that the product found and quarantined. Another page holds the product's few configuration settings. The fourth and final page lets you manage your account.
The product prompted me to run a quick scan, so I indulged it. That scan finished in barely 20 seconds. Then I clicked the hard-to-see Scan Options link and launched a full scan, which also finished quickly, 11 minutes. Trend Micro came in slightly faster, at 10 minutes. Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (for Mac) is the fastest macOS scanner I've timed, finishing its full scan in just 2.5 minutes.
Hands On With Airo
Just about every Mac-focused antivirus also tries to wipe out any Windows malware it encounters. Naturally these foreign programs can't execute on a Mac, but the Mac could conceivably serve as a conduit for them to reach Windows boxes on the network. I turned on the setting "Scan external devices when connected" and plugged in a USB drive containing my current set of Windows malware samples.
When nothing happened, I checked with my contact at Airo. He explained that with this setting enabled, the scans you launch include any connected external drives. It doesn't mean that the event of connecting a drive triggers a scan.
With this understanding, I launched a folder scan of the removable device. Airo eliminated 72 percent of the Windows malware samples, which is precisely the average for current products.
It's true that others have done better against Windows malware. Webroot got 100 percent of them, ESET managed 93 percent, and F-Secure Safe (for Mac) detected 91 percent. Again, these samples can't infect a Mac, so detecting them is icing on the cake.
Airo's real-time protection checks any apps you download; it also checks apps on launch. Some products, among them Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac, F-Secure, and Sophos, figure this real-time protection is all you need and hence don't bother with scheduled scanning. Airo runs a daily quick scan and a weekly full scan automatically; it doesn't bother to expose the schedule for user-initiated changes. Given that both full and quick scans are plenty fast, this makes perfect sense.
Excellent Lab Test Scores
I've been working with PCs since the 80s, and with Windows-based antivirus tools for many, many years. I'm fully equipped for hands-on testing of Windows antivirus utilities against actual malware samples, even ransomware. But this is a Mac-specific product, and my expertise on macOS is minimal by comparison. That's why test results from independent labs are so important for my Mac antivirus reviews. In fact, when I started reviewing such products, I only chose products with scores from at least one lab.
As you can see in the chart below, the labs don't necessarily keep testing the same set of products. More than 40 percent of the products I track don't have any current lab results. Airo looks very good, with a perfect score from AV-Test Institute. That means it successfully protected the test systems against malware, correctly avoided flagging valid programs or sites as malicious, and did it all without dragging down performance.
Of course, getting top scores from two labs is even better. Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro all got perfect scores from both AV-Test and AV-Comparatives.
Quite a few big names, among them ESET, McAfee, and Sophos Home Premium (for Mac), don't have any current test results. For newcomer Airo to hit the scene with one set of perfect scores is impressive.
No Phishing Protection Yet
During Airo's installation I encountered a screen that stated, "Airo can warn you about deceptive and phishing sites before you visit them." In response to that offer, I installed browser protection in both Chrome and Firefox to take advantage of phishing protection. I did notice that the settings for the browser extension mentioned blocking sites that contain: Malware, Adware, Scareware, Spyware, and Suspicious. Phishing wasn't listed.
Indeed, when I ran my standard phishing protection test, Airo did not detect or block a single phishing site. Fakes of PayPal, eBay, Amazon, and popular banks slipped right past it. The only page I found that got a reaction was the phishing test page from the AMTSO's collection of antivirus feature tests. Airo detected that one as an adware site.
My contact at the company confirmed that phishing protection is not yet present in Airo, and that the team plans to change the phishing protection promise during install until such time as that feature becomes available. That's good, because it's dangerous to give users a false sense of security by promising protection that isn't actually offered.
An Interesting Arrival
Airo Antivirus for Mac's enthusiastic developers have come up with an attractive new macOS antivirus that does its job unobtrusively. AV-Test Institute put it to the test and awarded the top score in each of three criteria. It wiped out some, but not all, of our Windows malware samples in testing. However, its promised phishing protection isn't yet present. We look forward to the next iteration of this interesting new arrival.
Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac get top scores from both labs we follow. Both excel in phishing protection, and both include uncommon features such as ransomware protection for Bitdefender and parental controls for Kaspersky. And both cost quite a bit less than Airo. The five-license price of Norton 360 Deluxe (for Mac) is the same as Airo's three-license price, and you can use your Norton licenses on macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS. In addition, your Norton subscription gets you five unlimited licenses for Norton's VPN and 50GB of online storage for your (Windows) backups. These three products are our Editors' Choice picks for Mac antivirus.
Newcomer Airo Antivirus for Mac earns top scores from one testing lab and has a refreshing Mac-centric interface, but some of its components aren't yet ready.
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