Go to the latest Advanced SystemCare PRO website (2021)
Advanced SystemCare PRO is a tool to improve your PC’s performance. In this review, I’ll test it on my personal laptop, answer some FAQ’s and write about my experience with it. Click here to skip to my verdict on how good Advanced SystemCare PRO is, or keep reading for the full review.
But first, what’s the company behind Advanced SystemCare PRO?
Advanced SystemCare PRO is developed by IObit, a company founded in 2004 and which claims “more than 100 awards and 500 million downloads worldwide” (their website also says that “Advanced SystemCare is used and trusted by over 250 million users in 220 Countries and Regions Worldwide” here). It’s impossible to verify those numbers for sure, but without a doubt, IObit’s software gets downloaded a lot. On the CNET page for Advanced SystemCare Free, for example, their current downloads (at the time of writing) are over 160 million.
On ZoomInfo (different websites give different numbers), it’s reported that IObit has 118 employees and $23 million in revenue, which sounds reasonable to me given their download numbers.
Where is IObit based, and who are the key people at the company? There is surprisingly scarce information on this online, but my research leads me to believe IObit is primarily based in China (though they may have offices in the USA):
- See this screenshot on LinkedIn of someone who did a lot of searching of IObit employees; there are a lot listed in China (mainly Chengdu, Sichuan)
- On IObit’s legal page, it says “If you live within the United States, the terms of this Notice shall be governed by the laws of the State of California. If you live outside of the United States, the terms of this Notice shall be governed by the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China” — no reason that would be the case unless the company has operations primarily in China
- Earlier press releases like this one say IObit is located in China, and I haven’t seen anything to indicate they’ve become more US-based since then
- On iobit.com much of the text is obviously written by a non-native speaker (e.g. “Does your computer running slow during startup?”)
But regardless of who the people behind IObit are and where they’re located, IObit is definitely a legitimate company that makes real software, else it wouldn’t be one of the biggest companies in its space.
Now we can proceed with the review.
Installing Advanced SystemCare
Go to the CNET page on Advanced SystemCare here and click the big green DOWNLOAD NOW button (CNET is a trusted provider of software downloads, and IObit’s own website just takes you to the CNET page when you try to download the free version of Advanced SystemCare). The current version of Advanced SystemCare, at the time of writing, is 47.8MB. Then it’s a very normal install process.
Using Advanced SystemCare
When you open Advanced SystemCare for the first time (the version I’m using here is v14), you’ll see this:
Let’s go through each of the main features of the software.
CARE
Has both an “AI” mode and a manual mode. The difference between these is the AI mode chooses for you what items to scan, and is recommended for new users. Here’s me running the AI scan:
This takes quite some time (on my laptop, several minutes) as it goes through all these different items. After the scan finished, this was the reported result:
I was surprised here not just with the variety of things that Advanced SystemCare checks for, but also the number of things it found. Take registry entries, for example. As you can see in the screenshot above, in its AI scan on my laptop, Advanced SystemCare found 665 registry items that might need to be fixed. That’s more than were found on my laptop using both AVG TuneUp (see my AVG TuneUp review) and CleanMyPC (see my CleanMyPC review).
Here are the categories of registry items Advanced SystemCare found (this is from a 2nd scan I ran):
Or, here are the types of junk files:
And here’s the result of the disk optimization scan (this can potentially identify and fix issues with your drive):
You can see that Advanced SystemCare is pretty extensive in what it looks for and the problems it can identify.
SPEED UP
The “Speed Up” part of Advanced SystemCare looks like this:
Again, pretty comprehensive. :/
Here’s a rundown of these options:
Turbo Boost: “Stop unnecessary programs to release RAM and boost your PC.” This shows you system services, non-Windows services and background apps running on your computer, and lets you disable them. Quite handy.
Startup Optimizer: Shows you what programs run on startup, and lets you stop them running on startup. Also useful, but you can do this just in Windows, so not a big deal.
Hardware Accelerator: Looks for outdated drivers and gets you new ones. This requires installing a separate piece of software.
Real-Time Tune Up: Monitors your system resources in real-time.
App/Toolbar Cleaner: Like the Hardware Accelerator, this requires you to download a separate piece of software. For cleaning browser toolbars and plugins, you probably don’t need this, as it’s easy to do in the browser itself.
PROTECT
Looks like this:
The Browser Protection here is basically just from IObit’s browser plugin called “Surfing Protection” (see it for Chrome here, for example). The System Protection monitors for viruses and malware, while Sensitive Data Protection tries to protect your browsing data and contacts.
SOFTWARE UPDATER
Just shows you what software on your PC could be updated, as do many other PC cleaners:
ACTION CENTER
Ignore this; it’s just a plug for IObit’s other software:
Is there a free serial, crack or torrent for Advanced SystemCare PRO?
No, and I don’t recommend trying to find one as any “cracked” version would easily be a virus itself.
What are the alternatives to Advanced SystemCare PRO?
There are several very good competitors to Advanced SystemCare, many of which I’ve written about before:
- CCleaner
- Avast
- System Mechanic
- Glary Utilities
- Malwarebytes
Advanced SystemCare vs CCleaner: CCleaner is the main competitor to Advanced SystemCare, and like Advanced SystemCare, it’s packed with good features. Available at $24.95, so significantly less than Advanced SystemCare if there are no promotions running. I recommend getting it if you can’t get a good deal on Advanced SystemCare.
Advanced SystemCare vs Avast: Avast and its PC cleaning products such as AVG TuneUp (AVG is a subsidiary of Avast) are also useful, and is very easy to use. Like Advanced SystemCare and CCleaner, Avast offers a very good product.
Advanced SystemCare vs System Mechanic: System Mechanic is another great piece of software, though the default price is a little high at $49.95. You can often get Advanced SystemCare for less than that (see below).
Advanced SystemCare vs Glary Utilities: Glary Utilities, also a highly reputable and useful product, has a base price of $39.95 but is often available for less than that. It does everything else Advanced SystemCare and other products here do, so if you can get it for cheaper than them it’s probably worth it.
What does Advanced SystemCare PRO cost?
The default price is $89.97 for a 1 year license for 3 PC’s, which is steep. However, if you’re lucky, you can get it for a lot less than that…
Discounts or coupon codes for Advanced SystemCare PRO
IObit will sometimes run discounts depending on the time of year. For example, I wrote the first draft of this review during Christmas, and they had a sale on for with the price of Advanced SystemCare PRO at just $19.99. You can go to this page on the IObit website to see if they are running any discounts right now.
Can I recommend Advanced SystemCare PRO?
I am impressed with the functionality of Advanced SystemCare and how much it found on my laptop, and can definitely recommend getting it if you can get it at some kind of discount. The default price IObit lists for Advanced SystemCare PRO, $89.97, is much higher than you’d expect and probably not worth it given there are other very good tools (listed above) that compete with it. If IObit is running a decent discount for Advanced SystemCare when you read this, though, it’s worth getting in my opinion.
