UPDATE: The new AVG 8.0 will launch soon, including a rewritten firewall. Read our story about AVG 8.0 here.

At first glance, AVG Internet Security looks exactly like the company’s free antivirus product. In fact, it’s a far more advanced package, with detection for all types of malware, antispam and its own firewall.

Its score of 95% in our malware-detection test was above average, as was its 60% success rate in the phishing test. When we visited websites known to host exploits, 86% of attacks were spotted and thwarted. And AVG performed well when it came to spam detection, too, catching 93% of our junk when coupled with Windows Mail’s filters.

But our tests showed there are better products available, and AVG isn’t without its drawbacks. Our biggest worry was its performance in our firewall test: no fewer than 18 vulnerabilities were discovered by our probe. We were also troubled by its RAM usage, which saw our machine boot with nearly 300MB less available memory than the same system before installation. This may be unloaded or swapped out later on, but it isn’t a good way to kick things off.

Finally, AVG Internet Security shares its free cousin’s user interface, which is arguably the most confusing on the market. It’s intrusive, too, throwing up big windows every time it updates and demanding a click whenever it
finds anything suspicious. This is forgivable, perhaps, in a free download, but not something we’d want to pay for.

In fact, since the package as a whole doesn’t really excel in any of the key areas we tested, it’s hard to recommend paying for AVG Internet Security at all.