- Apr 25, 2013
- 5,357
Baidu Antivirus is becoming quite popular in the antivirus community, mostly thanks to its minimal impact on system performance. Last month, AV-Comparatives conducted a research to find out the most undemanding antivirus products concerning resources consumption available to date, and Baidu Antivirus scored some impressive points, gaining a top position alongside Bitdefender and Kaspersky.
We wanted to test Baidu Antivirus for ourselves to find out if it's impressive in other aspects as well, mostly malware detection ratio and scan speed. The antivirus utility puts emphasis on the fact that it will be always be free to users, and that it can run as the secondary line of defense against malware by pairing it with another av product, without software conflicts that trigger Windows stability issues. As far as the antivirus engine is concerned, Baidu uses its own av and cloud security engine, while also turning to Avira's antivirus engine for a helping hand.
NOTE: Baidu Antivirus 2014 was tested on 64-bit Windows 8.1 Pro and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.
Performance results
We submitted 8,874 virus samples spread across 2.36GB to the test in order to evaluate Baidu's virus detection ratio. Default settings were applied. The testing machine was an Intel Core i5-3470 with CPU @3.20GHz and 12GB RAM, running Windows 8.1 Pro.
Baidu Antivirus finished the scan job in 4 minutes and 16 seconds, identifying 8,401 threats. Resolving the issues took a very long time (4 hours and 16 minutes): 1,788 items were repaired, while 6,613 were deleted, so only 473 virus samples remained undetected. Overall, Baidu identified and cleared 94.6% infected items.
On the other hand, the real-time safeguard was completely unresponsive, even after turning on the Avira engine and increasing the detection level for the Baidu antivirus engine. It worked smoothly on Windows 7, though.
The browser protection component discovered that Internet Explorer's homepage was hijacked and immediately resolved the issue after requesting permission.
The program returned 8 false positives in our evaluation. Seven of them were cleared with Baidu's cloud file scanner, so this created confusion.
The tool identified a malicious plugin made by Baidu itself.
It displayed alerts when attempting to access phishing websites, identifying 28 out of 30 links.
The Good
Baidu Antivirus supports a few languages for the interface and allows users to translate it into anything else by editing each word. It supports Windows XP through Windows 8/8.1 and both 32- and 64-bit architecture types.
The interface is among the most intuitive and pleasant ones we've seen in antivirus applications.
The developer promises it is permanently free to use. It can be run as a safety measure against malware by installing Baidu alongside another av product to strengthen defenses.
The anti-phishing module scored high in our tests.
CPU and RAM consumption was minimal during scans.
Thanks to the antivirus engine and cloud, scans are blazing fast.
The Bad
Although it is intuitive enough to be figured out by users, no software application is complete without a help file, and Baidu Antivirus lacks one.
The app does not integrate an option for setting the virus scanner to look only for user-defined file types.
The Avira Engine is not turned on by default for real-time protection. The real-time protection module did not react during our tests on Windows 8.1.
Many false positives were detected in our tests, and most of them conflicted with Baidu's cloud file scanner.
The Truth
As a standalone product, Baidu Antivirus is not the most reliable anti-malware application, since its real-time guard was disappointing in our evaluation. However, thanks to minimal resources consumption and excellent virus detection ratio, the utility may become trustworthy as a secondary line of defense.
EDITOR'S RATINGS:
User Interface:
(5/5)
Features:
(4/5)
Ease of use:
(4/5)
Pricing/Value:
(5/5)
Overall:
(4/5)
Full Article
We wanted to test Baidu Antivirus for ourselves to find out if it's impressive in other aspects as well, mostly malware detection ratio and scan speed. The antivirus utility puts emphasis on the fact that it will be always be free to users, and that it can run as the secondary line of defense against malware by pairing it with another av product, without software conflicts that trigger Windows stability issues. As far as the antivirus engine is concerned, Baidu uses its own av and cloud security engine, while also turning to Avira's antivirus engine for a helping hand.
NOTE: Baidu Antivirus 2014 was tested on 64-bit Windows 8.1 Pro and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional.
Performance results
We submitted 8,874 virus samples spread across 2.36GB to the test in order to evaluate Baidu's virus detection ratio. Default settings were applied. The testing machine was an Intel Core i5-3470 with CPU @3.20GHz and 12GB RAM, running Windows 8.1 Pro.
Baidu Antivirus finished the scan job in 4 minutes and 16 seconds, identifying 8,401 threats. Resolving the issues took a very long time (4 hours and 16 minutes): 1,788 items were repaired, while 6,613 were deleted, so only 473 virus samples remained undetected. Overall, Baidu identified and cleared 94.6% infected items.
On the other hand, the real-time safeguard was completely unresponsive, even after turning on the Avira engine and increasing the detection level for the Baidu antivirus engine. It worked smoothly on Windows 7, though.
The browser protection component discovered that Internet Explorer's homepage was hijacked and immediately resolved the issue after requesting permission.
The program returned 8 false positives in our evaluation. Seven of them were cleared with Baidu's cloud file scanner, so this created confusion.
The tool identified a malicious plugin made by Baidu itself.
It displayed alerts when attempting to access phishing websites, identifying 28 out of 30 links.
The Good
Baidu Antivirus supports a few languages for the interface and allows users to translate it into anything else by editing each word. It supports Windows XP through Windows 8/8.1 and both 32- and 64-bit architecture types.
The interface is among the most intuitive and pleasant ones we've seen in antivirus applications.
The developer promises it is permanently free to use. It can be run as a safety measure against malware by installing Baidu alongside another av product to strengthen defenses.
The anti-phishing module scored high in our tests.
CPU and RAM consumption was minimal during scans.
Thanks to the antivirus engine and cloud, scans are blazing fast.
The Bad
Although it is intuitive enough to be figured out by users, no software application is complete without a help file, and Baidu Antivirus lacks one.
The app does not integrate an option for setting the virus scanner to look only for user-defined file types.
The Avira Engine is not turned on by default for real-time protection. The real-time protection module did not react during our tests on Windows 8.1.
Many false positives were detected in our tests, and most of them conflicted with Baidu's cloud file scanner.
The Truth
As a standalone product, Baidu Antivirus is not the most reliable anti-malware application, since its real-time guard was disappointing in our evaluation. However, thanks to minimal resources consumption and excellent virus detection ratio, the utility may become trustworthy as a secondary line of defense.
EDITOR'S RATINGS:
User Interface:
Features:
Ease of use:
Pricing/Value:
Overall:
Full Article
