Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 $70 first year and three PCs by January 25, 2012 is available in third in your 2012 roundup of security suites. But though it earned the bronze overall, it captured the greatest rating in your malware detection, blocking, and removal tests. Those fantastic results, combined with the software’s excellent interface, make it a great choice.

bitdefender 2012

BitDefender Internet Security 2012

The Bitdefender suite found and blocked 96 percent of samples within our real-world malware tests (that help to exhibit how well antivirus software can stop brand-new malware); also it spotted 99.96 percent of known malware samples. Each of those email address particulars is very good–the latter was the third-best bring about that particular test we saw this coming year. False positives were almost nonexistent, since the suite misidentified only one safe file as being malicious. And also the Bitdefender software was the very best of test group in cleanup, too: It detected and disabled all active sample infections, and removed every last trace of malware 90 percent of the time.

BitDefender’s revamped interface is our favorite. Recently we criticized BitDefender’s old approach: The prior version with the suite had three different modes tailored to beginners, intermediate users, and experts. We found that this setup overcomplicated matters, considering that the basic mode was obviously a little too simplistic, but the advanced mode was an overwhelming combination of tabs and toggles.

BitDefender 2012

Its new design, though, needs to be easy for beginners to understand; nevertheless it still maintains a lot of flexibility for advanced users. Screens are laid out nicely, and at no point did personally I think at a loss for the settings panes. At the top of the primary window is really a status indicator that lets you know whether you’re protected; below that is the side-scrolling panel that permits you to turn various suite components on or off, as well as to drill down deeper to toggle more settings.

The person settings panes have a great deal of controls, however are arranged nicely. Clicking the help button in each one (denoted using a question mark) produces pop-up messages that describe just what the settings do. And also the program’s new “Auto Pilot” mode puts protection levels at their recommended settings; you can toggle it with a simple on/off switch on the main control panel.

Bitdefender could figure to improve its suite’s effect on overall PC performance, though. The Bitdefender package slowed startup times greater than another suite we looked over, adding over 10-seconds to your test PC’s boot time as compared to a brand new install of Windows. What’s more, it dragged our PC down significantly whenever we copied files over the network, completing that test in 5 minutes, 37 seconds. (In comparison, our test machine finished the copying operation in a minute without antivirus software installed.)

BitDefender Internet Security

Its scan speeds are respectable: BitDefender’s on-demand (manual) scanner checked 4.5GB of data for malware in 1 minute, 56 seconds, placing throughout the center of the pack. The on-access scanner (which runs whenever you open or save folders) completed its check of 4.5GB in 4 minutes, 25 seconds; although this is a slightly better-than-average result, still ranked seventh one of many 14 suites we viewed.

Having said that, when you can tolerate such system performance issues, Bitdefender Internet Security 2012 is a superb suite for novice and advanced users alike.