New Update Bitdefender Free Antivirus is back

[RoboMan]

But BitDefender is still heavy and buggy in comparison to the competition, not counting MalwareBytes and Microsoft Defender.

Based on what test? I've used it in three different laptops, ranging from 4 to 16GB, Windows 10 or 11, and had no performance issues whatsover, nor encountered any bug in the paid versions.

I won't say it wasn't heavy or buggy in the past, but it's been several editions with a stable, light edition.

 

[Shadowra]

But BitDefender is still heavy and buggy in comparison to the competition, not counting MalwareBytes and Microsoft Defender.

I didn't find it heavy or buggy during my test, I was impressed

 

[ScandinavianFish]

Bitdefender's resource usage and performance impact is worse than Malwarebytes.

 

[Kongo]

Based on what test? I've used it in three different laptops, ranging from 4 to 16GB, Windows 10 or 11, and had no performance issues whatsover, nor encountered any bug in the paid versions.

I won't say it wasn't heavy or buggy in the past, but it's been several editions with a stable, light edition.

Have to agree with you. Even the RAM issues are not present anymore on my system.

 

[blackice]

Have to agree with you. Even the RAM issues are not present anymore on my system.

View attachment 265090

It'll probably go up if you scan. It used to drop like that after a couple days of settling on the system, but no one would wait long enough to see.

 

[Kongo]

It'll probably go up if you scan. It used to drop like that after a couple days of settling on the system, but no one would wait long enough to see.

This is how it looks while scanning:

For me personally it's not a big deal anyway. Who would perform a scan with any AV if he needed best performance for a specific task. You should shedule scans for a specific time when you don't need many PC resources.

 

[silversurfer]

Have to agree with you. Even the RAM issues are not present anymore on my system.

View attachment 265090

I tried this new BD free on my laptop, system impact was lower than when I tried former BD free, but with Process Explorer we see a huge difference in amount of RAM, just saying
It’s for sure a real improvement compared to former BD free, now it's possible to turn-off options of protection settings. UI is no longer very limited... At first sight, well done BD

 

[Kongo]

but with Process Explorer we see a huge difference in amount of RAM, just saying

Well damn...

 

[peterfat11]

But BitDefender is still heavy and buggy in comparison to the competition, not counting MalwareBytes and Microsoft Defender.

always thought bd was heavy, but I tried it yesterday, it's in fact very light consumes about 200 mb of ram and 0 cpu usage

 

[Pat MacKnife]

When using BD free you no longer have to use trafficlight for better webprotection, its now inside AV !

 

[Nightwalker]

Based on what test? I've used it in three different laptops, ranging from 4 to 16GB, Windows 10 or 11, and had no performance issues whatsover, nor encountered any bug in the paid versions.

I won't say it wasn't heavy or buggy in the past, but it's been several editions with a stable, light edition.

Pretty much that, it is neither heavy or buggy, although its autopilot feature and recommendations are annoying.

I like Bitdefender, still using it on some machines, with a little configuration it is an "install and forget" software.

 

[blueblackwow65]

Have to agree with you. Even the RAM issues are not present anymore on my system.

View attachment 265090

I still get near 400, oh well uninstalled

 

[blackice]

I still get near 400, oh well uninstalled

Did you wait a couple days for photon to reduce ram usage? Also are you low on ram? If you’re not then It doesn’t even matter. Signatures in RAM are faster.

 

[blueblackwow65]

Did you wait a couple days for photon to reduce ram usage? Also are you low on ram? If you’re not the. It doesn’t even matter. Signatures in RAM are faster.

No photon was not taken in ,may try again with free version,never know.thks

 

[Captain Holly]

I had to test this new BD. I installed it on my old Lenovo laptop, it is about 5 years old and has 6gb RAM and a 1TB hard drive. BD Installation was very easy, I did sign into the same BD account I had a few years ago, first scan took only a few minutes, the widget is active and hanging out on my home screen and all seems well with BD. It picked up the eicar test file right away in Chrome, in Edge Smartscreen blocked Eicar first then BD also blocked it not even a second later. BD blocked the AMTSO phishing test page first on both Chrome and Edge. BD marked my search results in Bing but not in Google. I had to add the Trafficlight extension to get search results in Google for both browsers.

BD used 460 mb RAM when I first installed it, that was about 2 hours ago, it is now down to 197 mb for the main module. If I leave it alone it should learn my computer and drop further as time goes on. BD Free seems to be pretty easy to use, not very complicated and will likely get the job done. Web browsing is noticeably faster and smoother with BD than it was with MS Defender too. So far there have been no nagging upgrade offers either but I turned those off in Settings. So far so good. I may put BD on my main every day use laptop a little later today. It is very good to have the AV features and protection I need without the bloat and nags and useless cleaners/scans that I don't need.

C.H.

 

[Tutman]

Well since the New Bitdefender Free passed with flying colors on the test thanks to @Shadowra I think I will give it a try! Not liking the F-secure browser protection issue with Firefox.

 

[bayasdev]

Awesome move from BitDefender, I'll give it a try one of these days.

I think AV companies release free versions to gather more threat intelligence and improve their paid products.

 

[Trooper]

Based upon this thread, just installed the free version. Will take a peek at it over the next few days.

 

[Captain Holly]

I installed BD Free on my daily driver laptop, this one is a newer Lenovo with 8gb RAM and 1TB hard drive. This installation went well, except that in the end it popped up a window that offered me the chance to restore my previous version of BD Antivirus, I think that was because I had BD AV Plus on here about a year ago. I just clicked through the offer and BD has not hassled me any further about keeping the free version. On this laptop I left the BD Special Offers and Recommendations turned on, I want to see what they might tell me when I am online over the next few days. I will turn them off if they get obnoxious. I also enabled the Widget, I don't know why but I like having it on.

The Eicar and AMTSO tests ran the same as on my older laptop. Smartscreen and BD blocked them both. That is about the extent of my malware testing ability. When I first got BD running, it was at 426 mb RAM on the main module, that was about an hour ago, now it is down to 117.5 mb. Browsing and downloading are both faster on this laptop with BD than with WD. I added Trafficlight just to have it on in case I have to search on Google. I try to avoid Google as much as possible but sometimes Bing just does not give the best search results. I will keep BD for a while and see how things work out but so far it seems to be a really good AV. I hope we all have very good luck with it.

C.H.

 

[Trooper]

Mine has not calmed down yet, but I only installed it late last night before turning my PC off. Will see if it calms down a bit throughout the day.