Adding in the number of false positives and false negatives, where there was only one in all of the testing, gave the software 5.5/6.0. The low system load we saw is reflected in AV-Test’s Usability category, where the average slowdown for BitDefender was scored at 7, well below an industry average of 10. AV-Test resultsĪlthough there are no results yet available for the 2013 product, those produced by AV-Test (opens in new tab) for the 2012 engine are pretty remarkable. Comparing the copy times for our 2GB file copy with and without an AV scan running shows only an 11 per cent increase, the lowest we've seen. The performance footprint of the software is also pretty low. Our results suggest BitDefender is particularly good at picking between the two. It depends, of course, on the algorithms used to assess which files are potential malware hosts and which, because of their type, are never going to be a risk. Some products have examined over 270,000 files on this selective scan, while this one marks less than one fifth of this number. We continue to be surprised by the variations in file counts between different AV applications. This is the lowest speed we’ve seen, but because of the low file count, it finishes comparatively quickly. We scanned our 30GB of mixed files using Bitdefender Total Security 2013 and it took 20 minutes 10 seconds to inspect 50,844 files, which gives it a throughput of just over 42 files per second. It can hold a set of personal bookmarks for your bank, PayPal or other accounts, so they don’t have to be fed through your regular, possibly less-secure browser and also offers a virtual keyboard to guard against keyloggers. This opens a secure browser to handle online banking transactions. One other utility, which is started separately from the desktop, is Safepay. Safego checks links from Facebook and Twitter, so you don't inadvertently go to infected sites, while File Encryption provides a vault for encrypted files you want to keep more securely.

Safebox is an online backup facility, with 2GB available to share between your licences.

To highlight a few of the extras available in Total Security 2013, Tune-Up offers a monitor of all running applications, so you can see at a glance how much memory, CPU and system resources each is using. The settings button displays all nine panels at reduced size, leading through to separate controls for each element of the suite. (opens in new tab)There are five more panels, which can be moved through, including Tune-Up, Safebox, Update, Safego and File Encryption.

Bitdefender full scan took 20 hours