Bitdefender Total Security Review: Great, Easy to Use Protection

When you pay for software, the last thing you want are limits. And yet, Bitdefender Total Security imposes a rather surprising one on users: VPN use, commonly a part of mid-range antivirus suites, is restricted to a 200MB per-day limit per device.

It’s an odd ploy, given that rival services offer full, unrestricted VPN access, and sometimes a password manager subscription, too. But Bitdefender’s ace in the hole is its stellar protection, along with its easy-to-understand, yet still customizable interface. If you can forgive Total Security its occasional half-baked parts, it provides among the best defense against malware and online threats.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best antivirus software for Windows PCs to learn about competing products.

What does Bitdefender Total Security include?

Bitdefender Total Security offers broad protection against online threats, starting with antivirus, firewall, and ransomware. It also safeguards against network, web, and email issues like brute force attacks, malicious links, and dangerous attachments, as well as screens your local inbox for spam if you use Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. It controls access to your webcam and microphone to prevent remote spying, too.

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For additional security and privacy, Total Security includes a secure browser, access to its VPN service (albeit limited), tracker blocking, parental controls, and a scanner that checks for system vulnerabilities. It also has anti-theft software tools to recover, lock down, or wipe an associated device. Rounding out the suite are set of utilities: a system optimizer, file shredder for secure deletion, and usage profiles.

You can install Bitdefender on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices, though not all features are supported on all platforms.

How much does Bitdefender Total Security cost?

The price of Bitdefender Total Security varies depending on the number of devices covered — though not by much. You can choose between a five-device plan and 10-device plan, which all let you install the software on Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices.

5-device plan

• £49.99/$70 for the first year
• £74.99/$100 per year thereafter

10-device plan

• £52.99/$73 for the first year
• £84.99/$110 per year thereafter

Bitdefender enrolls users into auto-renewal by default, though refunds are allowed up to 30 days after the automatic renewal date. The company also offers refunds within 30 days of the initial purchase of a subscription.

To save more money on Bitdefender, you can purchase a license through retailers like Newegg, B&H, and Amazon, often at a sizable discount. For example, a 10-device, one-year plan was just $50 on Newegg at the time of this article’s publishing.

Key features of Bitdefender Total Security

Installation and user interface

Getting started with Bitdefender Total Security is simple and straightforward — the installation window even shows short explanations of different features as you wait. However, be careful when setting up your Bitdefender account, as you’re only asked to type in your password once. If you don’t use a password manager, that leaves you open to misremembering (or mistyping) it.

The Bitdefender app has a clean, simple interface, with big tiles for each feature. A shield icon in the upper-left corner serves as a status indicator; it’ll turn red when something requires attention. Along the left side of the window is access to the dashboard, features sorted by category (Protection, Privacy, and Utilities), notifications, and settings. The app works in conjunction with the Bitdefender Central website portal, where you’ll handle device management (which includes remote commands you can send to associated devices, like malware scans) and parental controls.

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In the dashboard, you’ll find six customizable shortcuts to different features, along with suggested action items at the top. The defaults are Quick Scan, System Scan, Vulnerability Scan, VPN, and Safepay, along with a blank tile.

Under Protection, you get access to the antivirus scanner, vulnerability scanner (which checks for weaknesses in your apps and network), and settings for online and advanced threat protections, firewall, spam screening, and ransomware safeguards.

From Privacy, you can start up the Safepay virtual environment or VPN, jump into parental controls (which are handled through the Bitdefender Central website), install the anti-tracker extension for supported browsers, and manage your webcam and microphone protection settings. You can also access Bitdefender’s password manager, but it’s a separate paid service and not included with the Total Security suite.

Within Utilities, you’ll find a link to Bitdefender’s anti-theft tools (managed through the Bitdefender Central website), the optimizer scanner that hunts for temporary and other disposable files, activity profiles (which let you easily change Bitdefender’s behavior to align with how you’re using the computer — e.g., gaming vs. work), and a file shredder for securely deleting files from hard-disk drives (HDD).

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Notifications show a running log of Bitdefender’s findings as it monitors your system, organized by urgency level. These differ from the pop-up notifications Bitdefender shows within Windows, which appear at the bottom right of your screen and typically promote other Bitdefender services. One such alert even went as far as to warn me about a LinkedIn data leak from two years ago, in order to suggest signing up for Bitdefender’s Digital Identity Protection service. Fortunately, you can turn off “special offers” in the app settings.)

Overall, Bitdefender errs on the side of ease-of-use, giving users a moderate number of settings for the app and per feature. The descriptions of features are also generalized and not very technical.

Virus, malware, and threat protection

Real-time protection

Bitdefender stays on constant alert for potential threats to your PC. On the computer itself, it scans opened or added files, monitors apps for suspicious activity, and screens downloaded email for spam, sketchy links, and dangerous attachments. It specifically looks out for apps that try to encrypt your files, too — when not initiated by you, such behavior is likely ransomware trying to hold your data hostage.

Meanwhile, whenever you’re browsing online, Bitdefender screens for malicious downloads, phishing and fraud attempts, encrypted websites with invalid or bogus certificates, and bad search results. It also blocks unauthorized incoming access to your PC, unauthorized use of your webcam and microphone, and online web trackers (when you install the company’s anti-tracking browser extension). You can additionally pair the program with the company’s free TrafficLight browser extension, which adds icons to search results marking them safe or risky.

Scheduled and manual scans

In an unusual move, Bitdefender does not automatically perform regular scans. To run a Quick Scan and/or System Scan at a scheduled time, you must edit those default scans — or instead create a custom scan. The process is not intuitive, either. You must open the edit screen and click the Next button before the option to Choose when to schedule this task appears. 

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You can then choose between four intervals — daily, weekly, monthly, or at system startup. Daily lets you set a time; Monthly lets you set which day of the month and a time; and Weekly lets you choose a day of the week and a time.

For manual scans, you can run Quick Scan, which focuses on critical files and processes; System Scan, which combs through your entire system; or a custom scan you’ve created. Quick Scan and System Scan can also be initiated through the Bitdefender Central website — though you won’t see signs of activity on the device. For this reason, I preferred starting my scans directly on the PC I was using.

Running System Scan can be slow during its first run, as Bitdefender takes stock of everything on your PC, but it speeds up afterward. (By default, the app scans only new and changed files.) You can also right-click on individual folders and files, and then choose Bitdefender > Scan with Bitdefender to check them out.

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Bitdefender allows you to adjust settings for scans — for example, you can choose to have the software always screen all files, even if they haven’t been changed since your last scan. You don’t get a ton of tweaks, but it’s more than competitors like McAfee and Norton (which go for an ultra-simplified vibe) offer.

Vulnerability scanner

In addition to scanning for viruses, malware, ransomware, and online threats, Bitdefender can check your PC’s app, system files, and network settings for exploitable weaknesses. (Attackers use these openings to compromise your device and/or data.) Found under Protection > Vulnerability, the tool hunts for weak Windows user passwords, critical Windows updates not yet installed, changes to Windows and network settings that could let malicious behavior slip past, outdated apps, Wi-Fi network and router settings that could be strengthened, and more.

Like the antivirus scans, you can remotely initiate a vulnerability scan through the Bitdefender Central website.

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Firewall

Bitdefender takes over firewall duties completely for Windows — and though most people are best off leaving it alone with default settings, you can customize how stringent the rules are and whether those rules change based on the type of connection you’re on. Bitdefender sends users a notification whenever a potentially malicious app tries to access the internet. I didn’t notice any overzealousness on Bitdefender’s part while using my test PC, and the settings are nicely streamlined without being too simplified.

Scam protection

Bitdefender recently released a free service called Scamio, an AI-driven chatbot designed to help verify the legitimacy of email, text messages, instant messages, links, and QR codes. To get started, you must head to scamio.bitdefender.com (login required) or Meta’s Messenger app. Then you’ll upload a screenshot, copy/paste into the chat, or simply describe the situation to the bot.

As a very basic second opinion, Scamio isn’t bad, though its analysis can take longer than expected. I liked that it can easily extract links from screenshot — a much safer method, since trying to copy/paste can lead to an accidental click. It also seems to err on the side of caution, dismissing my attempt at sweet nothings as a potential scam.

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That said, if you want hands-off help for text messages, you should also install Bitdefender on your mobile phone. So long as you’re comfortable with the permissions it requests (which go pretty deep), it will automatically screen your chat messages and notifications for potential scams.

VPN

Bitdefender Total Security includes access to its VPN for multiple devices, but there’s one huge catch — each piece of gear is allotted a paltry 200MB of bandwidth per day. (You can burn through that by browsing just a few websites.) You’re only allowed to connect to the nearest server, too.

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In Bitdefender’s favor is a sleek, easily navigated interface — I particularly like how important information and stats are laid out clearly. But with free, reputable VPN services offering much more…