Drivermax is a program that allows you to update the drivers on your system to the latest available version. It has a free version and a premium version. In this review I will be reviewing the free version of Drivermax.
Overall Score:
8/10
Pros:
Stable drivers have yet to crash my system or cause any issues
Option to set a system restore point before each install
Ability to give feedback on driver installation
Various useful features beyond simply downloading drivers
Cons:
Only able to install 1 driver a day
Convoluted process to access drivers
First, let’s start with the easy part: the gripes. The first thing that hit me is that although Drivermax claims to allow free version users to download two drivers in one day on their website, in practice I’ve only ever been able to download one a day. The other major complaint I’d have is that to actually obtain a driver, you have to search for updates and open a separate browser window where you’ll download a file that you can then open with the Drivermax agent to allow it to queue up the download. If it sounds confusing, you’d be correct. It’s a bit daunting at first, but the learning curve is fairly gentle.
Now, if you upgrade to the premium version these two issues are completely eliminated (or at least, that’s the claim). You can upgrade to Drivermax Pro for $10.00 for a 30-day license, $29.00 for a 1-year license, or $39.00 for a 2-year license. The good thing about these licenses is that it allows for “unlimited DriverMax usage on an unlimited number of computers.”
Aside from those two major complaints I have yet to run into any issues with the program. As far as I can tell everything is running smoothly and the new drivers downloaded are working fine. I’ve not encountered any new crashes or issues. I like that once a driver is installed and the system is rebooted, there is a feedback request that allows you to share if the driver has worked for you or not. Each driver is rated based on the responses it has gotten from users who have downloaded them. This is a very handy feature and enhances the feeling of security with Drivermax. Drivermax also goes beyond the call of duty by offering some useful extra features. With Drivermax you can get some detailed information about your hardware (it had information that I have yet to find anywhere else) and you can find information on unknown devices attached to your computer. Both tools are handy to have. Another set of important features involves driver backup and driver rollbacks. All these are do-able through Drivermax, but I have yet to have a situation that calls for these.
One thing I found especially unique to Drivermax is that it manages to bypass restrictions set by Sony on my Vaio laptop that disallows the installation of drivers directly from Intel for my chipset and whatnot. I’m not sure what the mechanism there is, but when I previously used Radarsync to try and update my drivers I ran into this issue just as if I tried to do it manually. An error would come up saying the driver I’m trying to install doesn’t match the driver required for the software. It wouldn’t have been an issue if Sony kept the drivers on its website updated to the latest possible version, but they tend to be stagnant there. Either way, Drivermax allowed me to bypass that entirely without sacrificing stability.
I’m very happy with Drivermax and would recommend it to anyone who is keen on keeping their drivers updated. Though it’s a bit slow doing one driver a day with the free version, for the average user using one or two computers it’s more than enough speed. But the good thing is that the Pro version exists for users who need those extra benefits at an affordable rate and with a reasonable license.
