Bitdefender Antivirus Review

During installation of Bitdefender Antivirus, questions prompt the installer to set the initial user mode. Novice mode presents no tabs, having only big buttons to check for updates and scan for viruses, and there is a third button to launch game mode, backup or parental controls. Intermediate mode adds tabs for backup, tune-up, security and network management, plus a status dashboard. Expert mode gives instant access to all program features and settings. We installed it in Expert mode for this review.
There is one useful cosmetic improvement over last year's version of the suite: the controls now offer a visible response to a click.

Independent Labs Test Results

AV-Test gave BitDefender their best rating of Very Good at detecting proactive malware. For malware detection, low false positives, and fast response time, the product rated Excellent. BitDefender's scan speed was found to be only Satisfactory, and for spyware detection it attained only an above average rating - however, their tests were based on the 2010 edition, and the 2012 edition might perform better in their next round of tests.
West Coast Labs and ICSA Labs certify Bitdefender Antivirus 2012 technology for virus detection and removal. West Coast adds checkmarks for general malware and Trojan detection. A false positive snatched Virus Bulletin's latest VB100% award from BitDefender, though it passed seven of their last ten tests. AV-Comparatives.org awarded BitDefender their second-best rating of ADVANCED. Again, it was false positives that prevented it from attaining ADVANCED+.

Excellent Malware Detection

BitDefender detected every threat on our test systems. It was able to remove some of them during the scan, with others it asked what to do at the end of the scan. We chose 'Quarantine' for all of them - if that didn't work, we chose 'Delete'. Sometimes the delete failed, leaving 'No action is possible'. Normal users would at this point contact technical support for help with manual cleanup.
For a third of the threats, BitDefender left behind executable files, and two of the threats were still running. There were also many registry traces and files left behind. In our malware removal test BitDefender scored 8.5 out of 10, beaten only by the beta version of Norton Antivirus which scored 9, and Panda Global Protection 2009 which scored 8.7. BitDefender tied with the Norton beta for first place in the commercial keylogger test, scoring 7.5 points.
In a scareware (rogue security software) test, BitDefender scored 8.3, well above average, and it detected 88 percent of malware and keyloggers which used rootkit technology, scoring 6.5 points, a little above average. Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware 1.36, eScan Internet Security Suite 10, Panda and the Norton Internet Security 2012 beta all scored 7 against scareware.