A security suite can handle a wide variety of tasks—just how much do you need yours to do? Every suite has antivirus protection at its core, and most pair that with firewall protection. Parental control is a common add-on. But really, the precise mix depends on the security company, and on the product line. Panda’s current product line is brimming with choices, from Panda Free Antivirus, through Panda Dome Essential and Panda Dome Advanced, to Panda Dome Complete, reviewed here. Upgrading from Advanced to Complete gets you a password manager, a file encryption system with secure deletion, a very simple system cleanup tool, and a one-trick anti-theft system for your Windows boxes.
Like all members of the current Panda product line, Panda Dome Complete displays the minimalist icons representing its features against a serene nature image. This background image changes from time to time unless you lock it to a favorite. It’s a nice change from the usual white or slate gray background.
I do find the plethora of icons a bit confusing at this top-tier level. When you scroll the main window down, you can barely get all 22 of them onscreen at the same time, and the labels don’t display until you point to an icon. As with other Panda products, a button at bottom right reveals the labels for all the icons at once, but with labels showing you can’t see all the icons at once.
How Expensive is Panda Dome Complete?
Upgrading from the next-smaller suite to Panda Dome Complete involves a considerable boost in price. A single license for Panda Dome Complete lists for $106.99 per year; for $118.99 you get three licenses. That’s way out of line with the top-tier security mega-suite pricing from most competitors. You get five Webroot licenses for just $79.99 per year, while a five-pack of Panda licenses costs $130.99. At $89.99 and $99.99 per year, respectively, five-license subscriptions for Bitdefender Total Security and Kaspersky Total Security are quite a bit cheaper than Panda.
You can use your Panda licenses to install protection on Windows, macOS, or Android devices. Note, though, that the protection on macOS and Android is precisely what you get with the less expensive Panda Dome Essential. At each higher suite tier, you’re paying more per license for those without getting any benefit.
Panda charges $178.99 per year to protect 10 devices, more than almost all competing suites. You do pay $249.99 per year for Norton 360 with LifeLock Advantage (that’s a $100 step up from Norton 360 with LifeLock Select), but that gets you 10 cross-platform suite licenses, 10 no-limits VPN licenses, enhanced LifeLock identity protection, and 250GB of storage for your online backups. The price is higher, but it’s a better deal than Panda’s 10-license subscription.
If you want to install Panda protection on every single one of your devices, you can do so for $202.99 per year. McAfee Total Protection lets you install security on every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household for $159.99 per year. Yes, I’m talking a lot about pricing, because Panda’s is off-kilter with the rest of the world, at just about every level.
Features Shared With Other Panda Products
The products in the Panda line are like Russian nesting dolls, with each one containing all the smaller ones. Open them all and you’ll find the smallest, Panda Free Antivirus, while each larger stage adds features. Everything you get in Panda Dome Advanced is also part of this suite, so I hope you’ll read that review. Here’s a brief rundown of my findings.
Of the four independent antivirus labs I follow, only AV-Comparatives includes Panda in its latest tests. Panda’s scores span the passing grades, with one each of Standard, Advanced, and Advanced+ certification. With perfect scores from all four labs, Kaspersky earned a 10-point aggregate score, the maximum. AVG Internet Security also got 10 points, but with just three labs weighing in. My aggregate score algorithm requires input from at least two labs, so Panda doesn’t have an aggregate score.
In my hands-on malware protection test, Panda detected 90% of the malware samples and scored a so-so 8.7 points. Tested with the same set of samples, Malwarebytes Premium managed a perfect 10-point score. A separate test using very new malware-hosting URLs gives equal credit to an antivirus that blocks all access as to one that eliminates the malware download. Using a combination of both techniques, Panda scored 86%. That’s low, considering that McAfee reached 100% in this test, while Bitdefender, G, Data, and Sophos all managed 99% protection.
In my phishing protection test Panda scored 71% detection, quite a bit better than its 46% score when last tested. But better doesn’t equal good. F-Secure and McAfee both took perfect 100% scores in their latest tests, while Bitdefender, Norton 360 Deluxe, and Webroot reached 99% detection.
All products in the Panda line include a VPN licensed from Hotspot Shield. However, the VPN is seriously limited. You can’t choose your server, and you only get 150MB of bandwidth per day. Only at the Premium level, above the Complete level reviewed here, do you get a VPN without those limits.
At the free level, you get a component that vaccinates USB drives against autoplay-based infection, and a Rescue Kit that lets you run an antivirus scan from an alternate operating system. Panda Dome Essential adds a simple firewall, a whitelist-based application control system, and a network analyzer that warns about Wi-Fi security problems and tracks the devices using your Wi-Fi. There’s also a virtual keyboard that can foil both hardware and software keyloggers.
Just below the Complete edition reviewed here is Panda Dome Advanced. Upgrading from Essential to that edition gets you a simple parental control content filter that does what it promises, but no more. The Data Shield component balks ransomware by banning all unauthorized access to protected documents. In testing, Data Shield blocked all but one of our real-world ransomware samples, though some managed to encrypt files, from three to 3,000, before protection kicked in.
Panda Dome Essential, Advanced, and Complete all let you use your licenses to protect macOS and Android devices. As noted, upgrading from Essential to Advanced or Complete brings no improvement in protection for other platforms, despite the higher price.
For a full understanding of everything that comes with this suite, you really should read my review of the next-smaller suite, Panda Dome Advanced. The remainder of this review will concentrate on what distinguishes Panda Dome Complete from Panda’s lesser products.
See How We Test Security Software
Password Manager
Passwords are everywhere, and all too many people still deal with that unfortunate fact by using weak, easy-to-remember passwords, or by memorizing just one password and using it everywhere. Either way, you’re asking for trouble. You need to create and remember a unique, strong password for every secure website, and the only realistic way to manage that is with help from a password manager. At PCMag, we advise everyone to install and use a password manager. When it comes as part of your security suite, there’s just no excuse not to use it.
At the time of our last review, Panda relied on a licensed version of AceBIT Password Depot for password management. We didn’t think much of that product as a standalone, assigning it just 2.5 stars. At present, Panda licenses password management from SaferPass, a better, more modern choice. You can refer to our review of SaferPass for a fully detailed evaluation. Do note that a few features noted as “coming” in that review have arrived, such as the ability to fill web forms with personal information.
The password manager installs as a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, or Firefox. Sorry, Internet Explorer users—you were warned that your browser has jumped the shark. Safari, too, proved to be a no-go. Once you install the extension, connect it to your Panda account, and define a strong master password, you’re ready to go.
Panda rates the strength of your password as you type, and it clearly takes more than just length and character sets into account. A password made of dictionary words gets zinged. For example, “Newpasswor1!” rated very strong, but adding a letter to make “Newpassword1!” knocked the rating down to poor.
The next thing you’ll see is a screen that suggests you enter your credentials for one of several popular sites, among them Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The presence of AliExpress, popular in China but not in the US, proved to be a clue that ESET Smart Security Premium also licenses technology from SaferPass.
Password Capture and Replay
Panda handles password capture and replay as you’d expect, starting by capturing your credentials when you log in to a secure site. You get the choice to confirm the save, skip for now, or suppress capture for this domain. Dashlane, LogMeOnce, Sticky Password, and others let you give the new login a friendly name such as “Personal Email” at capture time. Password Boss, AgileBits 1Password, RoboForm, and others let you organize the new capture with a system of folders or tags. Not Panda. It captures the URL, the username, and the password, period.
When you revisit a site, Panda fills in your saved credentials. If you’ve captured more than one set for the current site, it offers a simple menu, handily placing it right below the credential entry fields. In testing, it captured both simple logins and two-page logins like what Google and Yahoo use.
Smart Password Generator
If you’re updating a weak password or creating a new login, you can use Panda’s password generator to create a unique, strong password. Like the best password generators, Panda defaults to using all four character types. Its 16-character default length is fine, but you might consider raising that to 20 or higher. After all, you don’t have to remember the resulting password. Password Boss Premium and 1Password default to 20 characters, while Enpass, Myki Password Manager & Authenticator, and F-Secure default to 30 or more.
Form Filling Identities and Credit Cards
New since we looked at the standalone SaferPass, the Identities feature lets you use stored personal information for filling Web forms. It doesn’t go all-out the way RoboForm Everywhere does, but you can enter a full address, email, and phone number. You enter credit card information separately, which makes sense given that a single identity might well have multiple cards. When Panda detects fillable form fields, it puts a key icon in each field—just click the key to choose an identity or card. In testing, it filled most fields but missed some simple ones. In any case, every field Panda fills is one you don’t have to type.
Simple Security Report
Just installing a password manager and loading it with all your passwords is only half the job. The other half involves changing all those terrible passwords to new, unique ones. Panda’s Security Report aims to help with that task.
LastPass, Dashlane, Keeper Password Manager, and others present you with a list of all your passwords and their strength levels. With Panda, you only see weak and duplicate ones, along with any found in breach reports and any that are what Panda considers old. The report also warns if your master password is weak, or if you haven’t enabled two-factor authentication (more about that below). And you can click to check whether any of your passwords have been leaked—this check relies on the Have I Been Pwned website.
Two-Factor Authentication
Even if your master password is a 40-character behemoth, it can be a single point of failure. A hacker or snoop who gets hold of that password can own all your login credentials, from anywhere in the world. Unless, that is, you enable two-factor authentication. If logging in requires both your master password and another factor that nobody has but you, your accounts remain safe even if the password is compromised.
The simplest two-factor option prompts you to connect your account with the Google Authenticator app. In truth, any compatible TOTP (Time-based One Time Password) authenticator app such as LastPass Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator will do. Duo Mobile and Authy both handle Google-style authentication, but also have their own proprietary methods. Panda also supports Duo and Authy separately.
Then there’s the SoundLogin option, something I’ve never seen used except by SaferPass. The SoundLogin app on your smartphone emits an authentication tone that the computer’s microphone picks up. What if some nearby computer picks up the tone? I don’t know. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ll stick with entering the time-sensitive codes for authentication.
Additional Security
It’s important to keep the bad guys out of your accounts, for sure. But what if they’ve already gotten in? To see all devices connected to your account, just click the Secure Me icon. Don’t recognize one of the devices? You can sever its connection with a tap. Of course, if someone really did have unauthorized access to your saved passwords you need to get busy changing them all. Now don’t you wish you had activated two-factor authentication?
But wait! There’s more! If you’re securing a browser extension on a desktop computer, you can do more than just cut the connection. You can optionally have Panda log out from all websites for which it handled the login, delete associated cookies, delete browsing history, and close all tabs.
Secure Me doesn’t only let you defend against dire situations like stolen credentials. Maybe you just forgot to sign out of Panda on your work system before leaving for the weekend. No problem: you can sign out remotely.
If you’re in a paranoid mood and just want to lock everything down, Panda has that covered too. One tap on the Secure All Sessions button logs you out on every device.
Passwords Everywhere
You can use Panda for password management on any platform that has a supported browser, just by adding the browser extension or by syncing with a browser instance that has the extension installed already. Naturally, the app performs the same regardless of platform.
Panda also offers apps for Android and iOS. The apps look and act almost exactly the same as the browser extensions, with a few differences. Secure Me can’t log out of websites or clear history for mobile apps, for example.
The current password manager is a big improvement over the dated, awkward system that Panda used previously. It’s not going to challenge the top products—for example, it doesn’t support secure password sharing or password inheritance—but it handles all the basics. Now that you’ve paid for this expensive suite, it’s nice to know you don’t have to shell out more for a separate password manager.
File Encryption and Shredder
There’s always the possibility that a data-stealing Trojan might get past Panda’s defenses and survive long enough to send your most important documents back to its owner. If you’ve protected your data with encryption, though, that Trojan won’t find any secrets to steal. Likewise, even a snoopy relative who sat down at your desk while everyone else was having barbecue won’t have access to your encrypted files.
Panda installs the File Encryptor component the first time you use it, but it’s not a Panda product. Like the virtual keyboard, this component comes from AceBIT, source of Password Depot. That made more sense when the same company supplied the password component. The encryption and decryption dialogs have the same outdated look that we disliked in the old password manager.
Encryption is a common feature in top-tier security suites, but most handle it differently than Panda. Bitdefender, Kaspersky Total Security, and quite a few others let you create one or more encrypted storage containers, often called vaults. When the vault is unlocked with a password, it behaves just like any drive or directory. But when you lock the vault, its contents become totally inaccessible.
With Trend Micro Maximum Security, you only get one vault, but it’s a bit different from the rest. Where most vaults have a fixed size, defined at creation, Trend Micro’s expands as needed. And if your device gets stolen, you can remotely seal the vault so even the password won’t open it. If you get back the stolen device, naturally you can unseal the vault and continue using it.
Panda’s encryption system strictly encrypts files and folders—there’s no concept of a vault or other encrypted storage. It places a Password Depot 12 entry in the right-click menu for files and folders. No, there’s no Panda branding here. Below that menu are three options: Encrypt, Decrypt, and Erase.
When you select files or folders and choose Encrypt from that menu, Panda encrypts each item separately. You can create a self-extracting archive, one that you can share with others who don’t use Panda (or Password Depot). And you can set it to securely delete the originals.
If you lose or forget the password for a file, you’ve lost all access. If you securely deleted the original, as you should, that file is gone forever. Yes, there’s a checkbox titled “Store password with Password Depot,” but as Password Depot isn’t installed, it does nothing. Consider saving your file and folder passwords using the Notes feature of the password manager.
If you select a folder for encryption, Panda creates a separate encrypted version of each file in the folder. Not what you wanted? Check the box to create a single output file and you’ll get one encrypted file containing the folder’s contents.
Encrypting sensitive files is good; leaving the unencrypted originals lying around is bad. As noted, the File Encryptor includes an option to securely delete those originals, and you should always check that box. Kaspersky makes shredding the originals an integral part of the encryption process.
You can also securely delete any file or folder by choosing Erase from the right-click menu. The File Shredder component has no configuration options. Checking with my Panda contacts, I learned that it overwrites files three times before deletion, in accord with the Department of Defense standard. Other secure deletion products let the user tweak the number and style of overwrites, but I’m perfectly happy with Panda’s simplicity.
PC Cleanup
On the PC Cleanup page you’ll see what looks like four components: Free up space on my PC; Scheduled cleanup; Boot Manager; and Defragment drives. However, looks can be deceiving. The defragment choice simply brings up the built-in Windows disk optimizer. Boot Manager just lets you enable or disable startup programs, something you can do using Task Manager. It lacks the option to delay startup offered by similar features in Norton, G Data Total Security, Bitdefender, and others. And the schedule component does nothing but determine when to automatically run the basic free space cleanup.
That leaves free space cleanup as the only significant feature. What does it do? By default, it empties the Recycle Bin, deletes temporary files, and does something unspecified to “Windows registry files.” Checking with my contact at Panda, I found that this entry refers to deleting log files; it has nothing to do with the Windows Registry.
Panda also clears the cache for Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox (but not Edge). You can optionally set it to delete defective entries in the Registry, and wipe cookies and history for the three browsers.
The cleanup tool does what it promises, and does so quickly, but it’s painfully limited. You can get finer control over cleanup in any modern browser by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete, and emptying the Recycle Bin is a snap.
Some competing products do quite a bit more. Trend Micro and BullGuard Premium Protection help you find and eliminate duplicate files, even identical files with different names. Bitdefender and BullGuard show the biggest files on disk, so you can consider deleting any you don’t need, and these two also analyze the impact of startup programs on boot time. Panda’s cleanup offers little that Windows and your browsers don’t already handle.
Simple Anti-Theft
Installed on Android, Panda offers both antivirus and anti-theft, which is par for the course. Panda Dome Complete extends a limited version of the anti-theft feature to your laptops running Windows. You can log in to your Panda account and locate a missing laptop. If you have that vanishingly rare device, a laptop with built-in GPS, Panda will use it to get an accurate location lock. For every ordinary laptop, Panda must rely on IP geolocation or (better) Wi-Fi triangulation. The lock, wipe, and alarm features from the Android anti-theft system don’t apply.
For a simple sanity check, I installed Panda on a ThinkPad T480 and enabled Anti-Theft. Then I went online and checked the location of my devices on Panda’s web console. A Pixel 4 with Panda installed correctly showed up at the address of my office. However, Panda located the ThinkPad in the middle of a city park over five miles away. That’s not going to help anybody find it. From my experience, this feature is useless.
Too Expensive for What You Get
As noted, Panda Dome Complete is way out of line with the competition when it comes to price. The features specific to this version are a third-party password manager that earned just a decent rating in our separate review, an awkward third-party encryption system, a simple system cleaner, and a limited anti-theft feature for laptops only. If you use any of your licenses to protect macOS or Android devices, you don’t get any protection beyond what comes with the less-expensive Panda Dome Essential. Go ahead and spend the cash if you’re a Panda fan, but budget-wise it’s not the best choice.
Our Editors’ Choice winner at the security mega-suite level is Bitdefender Total Security. This product has a broader set of security features than Panda does, and its features all work well. In addition, its core antivirus technology gets top marks from the labs. If you look at Panda as a cross-platform suite, you can also do better in that realm. You can get a five-license subscription for Norton 360 Deluxe at a cost less than Panda’s single-license price, and Norton throws in five no-limits VPN licenses and 50GB of hosted storage for your online backups. At the 10-license level, Kaspersky Security Cloud costs less than Panda and brings you cross-platform protection, with considerably better support for non-Windows platforms. Norton and Kaspersky are our Editors’ Choice products for cross-platform suite protection.
