AVG Driver Updater is a Windows computer application that keeps each and every driver on your computer up to date. Runs on Windows XNUMX, XNUMX and XNUMX. Each of the major components of your computer system has its supervisor software. Drivers are the bridge between the hardware and the operating system. Hardware device manufacturers frequently release driver updates that improve performance, fix bugs, or resolve security issues. In our AVG Driver Updater review, we tested its user interface, features, and performance to decide if it's the best driver updater software available today.
Download the free trial version of AVG Driver Updater to try it yourself (Image credit: Avast)
- AVG Driver Updater at AVG Technologies for € 39.99
Plans and prices
AVG Driver Updater offers a single payment plan: €XNUMX / year / computer. You can download a free trial, but you can't use it to update your drivers, just so you can see which ones are out of date. At €XNUMX/year/computer, AVG Driver Updater is quite expensive. It makes no sense as a tool for an office with many computers because you need a license for each computer. Even using AVG Driver Updater in a multi-computer household can be worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars per year for a program that you really don't need to run very often.
AVG Driver Updater found eighteen outdated drivers on our test computer (Image credit: Avast)
Features
AVG Driver Updater is outrageously simple. Essentially it has one main function: to scan your existing controllers and check for newer versions of the supervisor software online.
You can see the version numbers and release dates of the drivers you have installed (Image credit: Avast) By clicking Show Details, you can see the version number of the supervisor you currently have installed and the latest version free online. The release dates of these drivers are also counted, so you can see how out of date your current drivers are.
You can change the storage location of the backup drivers by changing the settings in the menu (Image credit: Avast) When a driver is updated, AVG Driver Updater makes a backup of the original in case you want to go back to the previous version. You can choose where to save your backups on your computer in the Settings menu.
Interface and in use
AVG Driver Updater is developed to make it as easy as possible to use. The installation is very simple. Download the software, install it, and you're ready to go. The Settings menu reveals certain options. You can choose to be notified when you have an outdated supervisor, set the language, and enable or disable the taskbar icon. It is approximately that.
Details about your application usage can be used to market your third-party products, unless you disable those options (Image credit: AVG Driver Updater) There is a Personal Privacy menu where you can configure the information sent from your computer to AVG. By default, everything is checked, which means that details about your application usage can be sent to third-party analysis tools and used to offer you updates, other AVG products, and even products. We would prefer these options to be disabled by default. AVG Driver Updater found eighteen drivers that needed to be updated on our test machine. It's on par with the best driver update software we've tested, so it does its core job well. However, we also noticed that the software was using a significant amount of CPU while running in the background. On a mid-range computer, this was roughly XNUMX% CPU usage, enough to cause a noticeable drop in performance when running other demanding applications. For a program built to improve performance, this is counterproductive.
Support
If you click Help in the application, you will see a short common question that specifies what AVG Driver Updater does and how to use it. It is a very basic page that offers little useful information.
AVG Driver Updater shares a community support discussion forum with other AVG products (Image credit: Avast) To get help, you'll first be directed to the AVG Support Community Discussion Forum. AVG Driver Updater does not have its own discussion forum. Instead, it's grouped with ``Other Products'', making it quite difficult to find previous answers to questions people have had about the product. There's also live chat support, and you can get phone support by calling a number in the US, Canada, Australia, or the UK. Both options are only available to paying customers of the service. In our tests, live chat support was fast, friendly, and knowledgeable.
Competition
AVG Driver Updater has no shortage of competition. IObit Driver Booster is a better option if you have multiple computers because at $3/year it costs much less than AVG Driver Updater and you can use it on up to XNUMX computers. Driver Reviver is a similar tool to AVG Driver Update, but you can use its free version to install drivers manually. It's obviously a bit more work than using the one-click process that AVG Driver Updater offers, but if you only need to update your drivers once or twice a year, it could save you a lot of money in the long run.
Final verdict
AVG Driver Update is extremely easy to use, making it a good choice for less experienced computer users who want to keep their drivers up to date. But we'd expect more for $XNUMX/computer/year. AVG Driver Updater is a poor choice if you have more than one computer, as there is no functionality to update multiple computers at once and the licensing model makes AVG Driver Updater expensive to use for a desktop. But its primary function, finding outdated drivers and updating them, works just fine. Throughout our tests, AVG Driver Updater found every single driver left on our old computer system. If you don't mind paying sky-high for the AVG brand, Driver Updater is a good choice. Cost - AVG Driver Updater: ▼