A control tower for AVG software and applications
AVG Zen is a platform that allows you to control security, performance and privacy settings for the AVG products installed on your devices, all from the same place.
Activity reports in real time
AVG Zen is a hub: instead of monitoring the operating status of AVG products on each of your devices (desktop computer, laptop, smartphone and tablet), this platform facilitates it all for you and groups together the information about all AVG products on all devices, on one single interface.
What's interesting is that it also notifies you of any actions that need to be taken to address particular protection options, performance and privacy options that might not be fully optimized. For example, when your last antivirus scan was a long time ago, various options are disabled and the virus definitions need to be updated...
However, AVG Zen doesn't directly perform any actions. The service is mainly dedicated to monitoring and if you want to correct any malfunctions detected by the software or change any options, then you need to do this via the relevant device, software or application.
Simple to set up
The AVG interface is very bare: you won't find endless options and menus, because the aim is to simplify things as much as possible and so it will only show you the basics.
For those who already have AVG products installed on their devices, the configuration software is a very...zen. You only need the e-mail address that you used to register the products in order to link together all your devices, software and applications.
For anyone else, it's the same process, except you'll also be able to install AVG Internet Security and AVG PC TuneUp directly from the Zen interface. AVG Zen won't actually do much on its own, so you'll need at least two devices, software or apps to link together in order for it to be of any use. You should also take note that the versions that are available to install, are only valid as trial versions for 30 days.
Is it really useful?
If you use AVG software and applications to protect your devices, then Zen is a great tool to learn in the blink of an eye if everything is in order on all of your devices. The software is easy to configure and provides useful information about the AVG products you use.
However, it doesn't actually manage much, and we could even go so far as to say that it doesn't manage anything at all, because all it does is display the operating statuses and alert messages. These are already available in the interfaces of AVG Internet Security, AVG PC TuneUp, etc. Also, given that the software always reverts to the original software in order to perform an action, AVG Zen very quickly becomes something that you could do without.
