BitDefender Antivirus Plus 2012
BitDefender does it again this year with another excellent antivirus software. BitDefender Antivirus Plus 2012 continues to be a top-notch contender with great antivirus protection and an improved user interface.
How well does BitDefender Antivirus stack up against the competition?
When tested by the top testing labs around the world, including ours, BitDefender scored excellent in real-time antivirus protection, virus removal, and resource usage. As we always do, we hit BitDefender hard: viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, keyloggers, and it did well.
During our resource testing, BitDefender did well with light scanning and light idle usage. There was no significant system drain.
The new user interface is clean and easy to navigate. You can find any option or setting you need.
BitDefender's customer service remains is biggest weakness again this year. As with previous versions, there's no phone or chat support, which is a real shame; however, their help articles and video tutorials are good, so they should be enough for most people.
Overall, BitDefender remains one of our top choices this year because of their light resource usage, easy to use interface, and most importantly, strong virus, spyware, and malware protection.
Since we began testing antivirus software, BitDefender has been among the most consistent at detecting and removing viruses and spyware.
On top of that it's also equally good at removing viruses, too.
All of the top antivirus testing labs in the world, including ours, have given BitDefender excellent scores again this year.
BitDefender has received certifications from:
AV-Comparatives
AV-Test
ICSA Labs
Virus Bulletin
West Coast Labs
Like each of the above antivirus software testing labs, we tested BitDefender for:
Real-time virus protection - BitDefender scored at the top for scanning and blocking real-time threats before they can do any harm. These threats include viruses, rootkits, keyloggers, trojans, and spyware that target your computer while you're surfing the web.
Virus and malware removal rates - These tests determine how well BitDefender can scan, detect, and remove viruses that have infiltrated your system. BitDefender Antivirus Plus scored well above the competition for virus and malware removal.
Phishing site blocking - These tests see how well BitDefender can block phishing sites that try to steal your personal information. While most browsers already do a good job in blocking phishing sites on their own, BitDefender does exceptionally well with anti-phishing. Not surprisingly, BitDefender proved to be more effective against phishing sites than Internet Explorer alone.
Performance rates - These tests show how much system resources BitDefender uses. We found BitDefender to be light and average while sitting idle as well as when scanning.
Putting it all together, BitDefender did excellently in our real-world tests. Viruses and other malware were easily blocked or removed. Their anti-phishing filter was exceptional, and their system resource performance was good.
Having seen BitDefender evolve each year as we have, we weren't surprised to see how good BitDefender's resource usage was.
On average, we saw around 3% of CPU was used while running idle and about 61% during a manual scan.
Generally, BitDefender Antivirus is light on resources both when idle and while running a full-system scan.
User Interface: 100%
BitDefender has simplified their user interface from last year's 3-level approach. This year, the UI (user interface) is clean and easy to use.
The main overview screen has a large scrollbar showing all of the antivirus tools available: Scanning, Antispam, etc. Switches turn each feature on and off, or you can push the main button for more options.
Inside the settings window, all of the main features are listed on the left in standard navigation. Clicking on each section opens that set of tools and options in the main screen.
There's a handy "Events" tab for each section that logs all actions taken. For instance, when you run a system scan, that event will be logged in the Antivirus Event section. This is useful so you can keep track of what you did and when.
The color scheme is black and white with color indicators. Red indicates something needs attention, while green indicates everything's fine.
Overall, the user interface for BitDefender Antivirus Plus is an improvement from last year. We like the simplicity mixed with advanced options that are still easy enough for even the novice user.
Technical Support: 78%
Ah, technical support.
It's hard to for most companies to do and even harder to get right, and it's one of the few weaknesses in BitDefender this year.
There's a "Help and Support" link in the user interface that launches their support window. Inside that window are three options to browse BitDefender's documentation, help files, or support contact info.
If you click the "Contact Support" link, BitDefender launches a diagnostics tool that gathers important information about your system that BitDefender needs.
Once completed, the diagnostics information is sent and they're contact you shortly with an answer to your problem.
Support for: BitDefender Antivirus Plus 2012
General Support
Support Email
Support Forums
Or, you can always go directly to their website for support. There you'll find video tutorials, documentation, help articles, and forums. Each section is easy to access and understand.
You can email BitDefender directly if you can't find the answer to your question. However, there's no indication as to what extent BitDefender will help you.
There aren't any premium services (paid support), so if you have a serious infection, it's unknown as to how deep a BitDefender representative will go with you to solve the problem.
We couldn't find any contact phone numbers either. So far, BitDefender still doesn't have any one-on-one, phone-based support of any kind. Fortunately, BitDefender Antivirus Plus 2012 is a great product that seldom needs support. But somewhere down the line, a lot of folks need a little support.
Without any phone or chat support, we can't give BitDefender a higher score in this department. While their help articles are useful, nothing can replace direct, person-to-person contact with a knowledgeable representative. Hopefully BitDefender will add some phone support soon.
Antivirus Updates: 97%
You don't need to worry about manually downloading your updates with BitDefender. Updates are set to automatically download and install by default. BitDefender will check for new updates each time you start your computer, then every hour after that.
However, you can set updates to prompt you before downloading or installing.
BitDefender gets a high score in this department because they give you the option for updates to run silently in the background, or to manually control them.
