The fact is Avast mission is to protect your system(s) against all threats.
It is, imo, the best a/v available, and certainly the best free a/v available.
Whether a certain feature is incorporated into a paid program is up to Avast, as you have said you want to have. How they go about releasing a feature short of rebuilding a program is moot if it works as it should.
Design programming is always a work in progress and what was said or published yesterday may or may not hold true today, due to complexity and design priorities. Things always change in the malware landscape.
You have the feature, use it.