DriverMax v16 Review

This free driver updater is easy to use and supports automated installations, but it also has a major limitation

By
Tim Fisher
Photo of Tim Fisher, Lifewire GM and Writer
Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University
Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.
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Updated on January 5, 2024
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DriverMax is a free driver updater tool that supports automated installs, scheduled scans, and complete device driver backups, among other things. However, a significant limitation is that the free version limits how many drivers you can download daily and monthly.

DriverMax 16 list of updated drivers

This review is of DriverMax version 16. Please let us know if there's a newer version to review.

DriverMax Pros & Cons

Despite this long list of cons, there are several redeeming qualities:

What We Like

  • Automated installations.

  • Prompts you to create a restore point before installing drivers.

  • Downloads drivers directly through the program.

  • Can identify unknown hardware.

  • Option to ensure only signed drivers are installed.

  • Can create a backup of all your drivers.

  • Setup doesn't install unnecessary programs.

What We Don't Like

  • Can't download more than two drivers per day.

  • Can't download more than 10 drivers per month.

  • Can't download more than one driver at once.

  • Requires an internet connection to find outdated device drivers.

  • Has been known to find incorrect drivers.

  • Some features appear free until you try using them.

  • Some security software identify it as a potentially unwanted program (PuP).

More About DriverMax

DriverMax does a lot of its work automatically and supports every recent version of Windows:

  • Finds driver updates for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, including all Windows Server editions
  • Device drivers can be backed up and restored, as well as rolled back to a previous version
  • DriverMax can bet set to check for updated drivers any time of day every day, week, or month
  • After a scan, the program lists not only the outdated drivers but also the ones that are already fully up to date

My Thoughts on DriverMax

Some driver update tools are very simple (in a bad way), making you crawl through a website to find a download link, and then force you to unzip the download yourself and then manually update the driver.

Other driver updater tools provide more advanced features like driver backups, automated installs, internal downloads, and System Restore options. Fortunately, we see some of these features with DriverMax as well.

Again, an obvious disadvantage with this program is the limitation it sets on how many drivers you can download on a daily and monthly basis. Normally, however, you probably don't have too many devices that need updated at the same time, so spanning this across several days probably isn't really a huge concern for most people. This is what I was able to do during my tests, and I didn't feel super restricted.

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