CCleaner Professional Full Review - Tech Advisor

As with many Windows applications, there is a free version of CCleaner, but it is limited to standard protection (tracking files and browsing data) and cleaning. Here we are testing the paid professional version, which unlocks a series of additional features (such as Speed ​​and Security), allows you to schedule cleaning and monitor the status of your computer.

Features and performance

Like most tune-up software, CCleaner Professional is very easy to install and download. You will be glad to know that it only takes up 77MB of space on your computer and is compatible with Windows 7 and later versions.

After a short intro explaining the features, CCleaner performs a health check in seconds, highlighting privacy trackers and junk files to remove, as well as startup apps to disable and apps to update. day.

On our laptop, CCleaner spotted 7,371 trackers, 792MB of junk files, and only one app to update, Audacity in this case. You can select unwanted items to delete, but only by groups of different types, such as Recycle Bin, Temporary Application Files, and Temporary System Files.

There is a custom cleaning option to scan Windows and applications. Again, this scan only takes a few seconds (2.79 precisely), it found 1.9 GB to delete, mostly cache files. Although this is a significant amount of space to free up, remember that cache files are there to speed up your Internet browsing, for example. Deleting them could therefore slow down certain processes.

In total, CCleaner was able to delete 3.09 GB of data. For comparison, MacPaw CleanMyPC only managed to free up 1.68 GB. Note that with the professional version you can schedule the cleaning. The Smart Cleaning function performs automatic cleaning when you reach a certain amount of files to delete (500 MB by default).

Updating drivers is to make sure everything is up to date and therefore working as well as possible. In our case, 32 drivers out of 152 are to be updated in the audio, Bluetooth, biometric and other areas.

Registry tool quickly found 271 issues, you can review them individually or fix them all with one click. The typical solution is to delete the value or key from the registry.

Finally, Tools contains various other options, including the usual list of apps and browser plugins to uninstall. However, there isn't much more information than what Windows or your web browser will give you.

The Duplicate Finder and Disk Analyzer tools are more likely to be useful. Note that the former cannot determine which files are needed and can be safely deleted. So it's best to stick to media like photos and videos. Although it spotted many files, we found a way to select them to delete them all at once.

This last point can help you understand what is taking up space on your computer, perhaps without you realizing it. Our laptop contained nearly 7 GB of photos; moving them to an external drive or cloud would be an easy way to free up space.

Price

As mentioned before, there is a free version of CCleaner but the professional edition costs €29.95 (to €20.96 with discount) for a single PC for one year, this which makes it one of the cheapest PC cleaners.

You can also opt for Professional Plus, which includes Defraggler, Recuva, and Speccy apps. It is €44.95 (€31.46 after reduction) for three PCs for one year, or €62.96 for two years.

Conclusion

CCleaner remains one of the best cleaners, not only in price but also in top-notch performance. The interface may not be the most user-friendly, but it does provide a wide range of tools. We would just like to have a little more control over what data and content gets deleted.

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