The bottom line: A lack of recent substantive updates haven't prevented Malwarebytes Anti-Malware from staying on top of the on-demand malware-killing mountain.

Review:

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a surprisingly effective anti-malware tool given that it hasn't received any major updates in the past few years. Sure, the scans are a bit faster and the installation is definitely smoother, but overall the product remains unaltered.

Installation

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, or MBAM as it's often abbreviated, has a rapid installation process that simultaneously loads the program onto your computer and updates its detection engine when you run the installer. The whole process took under 5 minutes on our computer.

Interface

MBAM is no paragon of design aesthetics, but it is usable. It opens directly to its Scanner tab, and offers eight other tabs in a horizontal row. Few options per tab keep down the clutter.

What it lacks in visual pop it makes up for in utility. The rest of the tabs let you access the updater, quarantine, scan logs, the ignore list, program settings, and the FileAssassin tool for deleting locked files. The About tab tells you relevant program information, such as version number, while the Protection tab provides access to the real-time protection features. If you're in the freeware version, Protection provides a near-instantaneous, one-click path to upgrade to the trial.

However useful MBAM is, the text-heavy interface clearly identifies it as a tool for power users, although there are more complicated malware removal tools out there. Considering that the program's major function is to scan, and that's generally a one-click process, we'd like to see a more accessible interface in the future.