Bitdefender Internet Security

Great little internet security this, doesn't take too much much room, lots of features and dies what it says on the tin.

2023 review: Will definitely be back for this next year. Price matters. 2024 review: Last year the price was £14.99 and this year the price is £24.99. apparently down from £49.99. I wasn't at home, so I order via the amazon app and logged in to my Bitdefender profile to add the product code to my account to for another year. By this time my subscription had expired by about 8 hours. Got back home to start using my PC. Checked Bitdefender to see if everything was okay and all signs were good. Even Bitdefender Central said I had 366 days of subscription left and I was using 2 of my 3 license. I went to check my firewall for something and saw that my list was completely blank!!! Why? There should be 100s of allowed and blocked programs in there. I looked a bit harder and Bitdefender was recommending that I turned on my firewall. The firewall was apparently already switched on and the button from the recommendation did nothing noticeable. Restarted my computer... no obvious change, until I looked at the firewall setting which now showed that it was turned off and the toggle switch wouldn't activate. I was getting annoyed now because did that mean that my computer was left online and unprotected for the past 30 minutes? Were all the blocked programs now ringing home? I decided to obtain the Bitdefender installation file and carry out an overlap of the program. Maybe that would fix it. It fixed it but brought a lot of other annoyances. Firstly, I've known that there is a different program design theme that has been out for at least 4 years. I just couldn't get it on my main PC. My laptop had the newer design so I just thought that it was a spec issue and Bitdefender left me on the older design. If they could have, they would have pushed a software update to the app to allow the modernised version right? NOPE. All this time, all I had to do was download the program file and install it on top of the original. Yey, now I have the dark theme and can hover my cursor over virus alerts and firewall alerts to learn the file path of the problem. Secondly, my firewall allowed and blocked list was completely clear. My custom virus scan profiles are all gone. All the programs and sites that were in my exemption list were gone which meant Bitdefender and Windows security were going nuts over different concerning programs that I wanted on my computer. Its all resolved now. Just annoyed that it wasn't seamless this time around. Another con, why can't we expand the window of the application to see more of the contents. Just stupid that we are forced to use such a small window pane. I trust Bitdefender for my PCs and will be using them many years down the line. Just next time I will do an offline subscription extension and install.

The blurb says it is security 'for all your devices'. No, it isn't. It is a con. It will work on a Windows computer - but if you try to add it (using the link given) to a mobile, it will ONLY add a 14 day trial of their mobile version. It is a sneaky way to get more money out of you! I won't be renewing Bitdefender next year. Just wish I could return it right now for a refund!

The product itself is good in my opinion. I’ve been using the Internet Security version for the last year and never had any issues. It doesn’t have any annoying popup ads and quietly does its job. The only slightly annoying thing is that it will tend to block things that communicate out from your computer which you wouldn’t expect it to. In the beginning I found it confusing as some freshly installed games would load and then close themselves (as if they crashed). Took me a while to realise this was because bitdefender was blocking them from communicating out to check for updates at launch. Adding mods to some games could also cause a game to fail to load, which can lead you to think it is the mods fault. Once you understand what is going on it is fine, just a bit confusing at the start. When anything crashes these days, I go straight to bitdefender as it is usually something that has been blocked. This is probably good behaviour, but Im not sure if this happens on other brands as well. Also, please be aware that the price structure for the range makes little sense. There are 3 tiers of the product Anti-Virus, Internet Security and Total. As I’m writing this Total and Anti-Virus can be found cheaper than the middle tier. Prices fluctuate quite wildly during the year on amazon and I would advise consulting a price history site before purchase. Last year the Black Friday period was the time to buy, but this year it appears the best deals were in April-June. You can grab a great bargain during flash sales as AV software seems to always be on the amazon discounted lists, but be aware these prices dont show up on the price history sites for some reason

Very good antivirus I used years and always works perfect

Security software ideally just gets out of your way and lets you work, whilst protecting your machine in the background. Bitdefender, unfortunately, is not that. The parental service is CPU-hungry, consuming 15-20% of a processor even when the user account being monitored is logged out. By default, there are regular pop-ups / notifications spamming you to purchase extra features; these can be turned off, but not completely. Worse, Bitdefender interferes with the shutdown / sleep process. Since installing it, my PC refuses to shut down or sleep reliably leaving no alternative but to press the off button. Bitdefender is unworthy of the regularly positive reviews it receives -- I won't be renewing my subscription.

Brilliant price saved loads! Instant cover for another 12 months for three devices activated via email, quick & Simple.

Way cheaper to to buy this pack off Amazon than simply click re-subscribe in the app. Code came through in about 5 mins, all sorted!