Battle Emsisoft vs. Eset Internet Security vs. BitDefender Total Security vs. F-Secure Safe (2020)

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BitDefender Total Security
F - Secure Safe!
Emsisoft Anti - Malware
Eset Internet Security
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MacDefender

Level 16
Verified
Top Poster
Oct 13, 2019
779
Bitdefender


BitDefender signatures seem to be getting worse ????
They are a bit slow to add signatures for new threats. They compensate for this somewhat with their excellent behaviour blocker.

yeah that is what I was alluding to. Their signatures are very comprehensive but lately zero-days have been more turning into Zero-weeks which is a bit disappointing. Almost everyone who uses the BD engine successfully will pair their signatures with an in house engine for submissions as well as an excellent behavior blocker.
 

MacDefender

Level 16
Verified
Top Poster
Oct 13, 2019
779
bitdefender better than Eset - F-Secure
I would personally disagree, but it's always controversial to rank AVs :) . Both ESET and F-Secure deliver excellent protection too. F-Secure in particular got significantly better in AV-TEST and Malware Hub testing once they switched away from the BitDefender signatures.

BitDefender the suite has a lot of additional components that provide protection beyond what they license out via their signature database, sure, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on what aspects of it make it better than ESET or F-Secure.
 

MacDefender

Level 16
Verified
Top Poster
Oct 13, 2019
779
Active Control Threat and New Ransomware Remediation are better than Eset and F-Secure

Do you have details on that? I agree at face value, because ESET doesn't have any sort of behavior monitoring/blocking capabilities, ESET is going to be weaker in the area of dynamic protection.

F-Secure's DeepGuard engine has most of the same featureset as described in the Active Control Threat and New Ransomware Remediation modules, so the difference is going to boil down to how well they actually work in the real world. I'm not sure if BitDefender has been tested recently, but @harlan4096 was nice enough to run F-Secure through its paces earlier this year and the results were pretty good for their behavior blocker, primarily failing on scripts and rarely failing on binaries unless they failed to do anything harmful.
 

blackice

Level 38
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Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,730
Do you have details on that? I agree at face value, because ESET doesn't have any sort of behavior monitoring/blocking capabilities, ESET is going to be weaker in the area of dynamic protection.

F-Secure's DeepGuard engine has most of the same featureset as described in the Active Control Threat and New Ransomware Remediation modules, so the difference is going to boil down to how well they actually work in the real world. I'm not sure if BitDefender has been tested recently, but @harlan4096 was nice enough to run F-Secure through its paces earlier this year and the results were pretty good for their behavior blocker, primarily failing on scripts and rarely failing on binaries unless they failed to do anything harmful.
@Robbie most recently did a few tests in the hub last sep-dec. It did okay. I know someone else did more testing earlier last year with mixed results on 'zero days'.
 

Devilboss94

Level 1
Apr 16, 2020
40
Hello, I among these that you have chosen I tried in the latest Bitdefender Total Security, despite the excellent price I do not recommend it because it was very heavy (the system where I tested was a gaming machine) slows down a lot while browsing, so if the performances are important for you do not recommend.

Eset I tried the nod32 antivirus a few years ago, very light and performing and has good customizations to make it more secure, shame about the high price, however, I recommend it.
 

blackice

Level 38
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Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,730
Hello, I among these that you have chosen I tried in the latest Bitdefender Total Security, despite the excellent price I do not recommend it because it was very heavy (the system where I tested was a gaming machine) slows down a lot while browsing, so if the performances are important for you do not recommend.

Eset I tried the nod32 antivirus a few years ago, very light and performing and has good customizations to make it more secure, shame about the high price, however, I recommend it.
When did you last try bitdefender? 2020 is my first time, but I notice zero difference with browsing or download speeds than with ESET. I know with 2019 they had issues with browsing speed being slowed, but reports are showing that's mostly been fixed.
 

Devilboss94

Level 1
Apr 16, 2020
40
When did you last try bitdefender? 2020 is my first time, but I notice zero difference with browsing or download speeds than with ESET. I know with 2019 they had issues with browsing speed being slowed, but reports are showing that's mostly been fixed.
I executed the test two months ago, I only report that I noticed much slower navigation compared to WD, the same browser and extensions.
I really hope they solved it.
 

blackice

Level 38
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Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,730
I executed the test two months ago, I only report that I noticed much slower navigation compared to WD, the same browser and extensions.
I really hope they solved it.
Interesting that's the first report I've heard of BD 2020 slowing browsing, but I have only been testing it out for a month or so. Anyway, ESET is a great solution so no need to look elsewhere.
 

Devilboss94

Level 1
Apr 16, 2020
40
Interesting that's the first report I've heard of BD 2020 slowing browsing, but I have only been testing it out for a month or so. Anyway, ESET is a great solution so no need to look elsewhere.
But look also I had heard of it well in terms of speed, but then you know a lot of writing but then the practice is different.
However I forgot to write that it also has a very high Ram idle consumption for me, I remember around 400 mb, even if it is a complete suite it seems high.

I agree Eset Internet S. in this case is the best choice, although it is expensive, but I have also seen here on the forum that there are various good offers.
 

blackice

Level 38
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Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,730
But look also I had heard of it well in terms of speed, but then you know a lot of writing but then the practice is different.
However I forgot to write that it also has a very high Ram idle consumption for me, I remember around 400 mb, even if it is a complete suite it seems high.

I agree Eset Internet S. in this case is the best choice, although it is expensive, but I have also seen here on the forum that there are various good offers.
I had similar ram usage, after 2 days it now idles just below 200, sometimes as low as 150. But every machine is a different environment for these programs. And I wouldn't deter anybody from using ESET IS (y)
 
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Stopspying

Level 19
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Jan 21, 2018
814
I'm not a tester and only have recent everyday experience of Emsisoft and SAFE. We switched from the former to the latter late last year as the main AV on our devices at home. I really liked Emsisoft AM, it was light and had a great behaviour blocker, we switched as the license ran out and our ISP has a deal that includes F-Secure SAFE. I really like it too, for the same reasons. We're running these on a variety of PCs, a laptop, a netbook and a tablet of varying ages and power, all with similar low drain on the ability to do a range of work that can be heavy on resources at times.
 

MacDefender

Level 16
Verified
Top Poster
Oct 13, 2019
779
1 - Emsisoft - the most complete uses two mechanisms and an excellent behavior module
2 - F-Secure
3- BitDefender
4 - Eset

Just FYI, F-Secure is arguably the original inventer of multi-engine scanning (they used to call it CounterSign technology back when they were Data Fellows)

What are the functions of Hydra, Virgo, Capricorn and Lynx modules?

Today they use:
- Hydra: Script based (heuristic) AV engine.
- Virgo: Certificate whitelisting engine.
- Capricorn: Signature based AV engine. (Avira)
- Lynx: Cloud scanning (sandbox) engine.
 

The Ordynary

Level 3
Apr 26, 2020
105
Just FYI, F-Secure is arguably the original inventer of multi-engine scanning (they used to call it CounterSign technology back when they were Data Fellows)

What are the functions of Hydra, Virgo, Capricorn and Lynx modules?

Today they use:
- Hydra: Script based (heuristic) AV engine.
- Virgo: Certificate whitelisting engine.
- Capricorn: Signature based AV engine. (Avira)
- Lynx: Cloud scanning (sandbox) engine.
It is a fact that F-secure has improved by incorporating the Avira mechanism, but I still think that F-secure itself is confused with so many modules, it is not managing to put them all in Harmony, in my last tests F-secure put doubtful files in the list of exclusion, without my permission, where DeepGuard detected them and soon the error message appeared. I still think there is a lack of harmony between the modules, cohesion, When I get this it will be one of the best, I'm rooting for them.
 

MacDefender

Level 16
Verified
Top Poster
Oct 13, 2019
779
It is a fact that F-secure has improved by incorporating the Avira mechanism, but I still think that F-secure itself is confused with so many modules, it is not managing to put them all in Harmony, in my last tests F-secure put doubtful files in the list of exclusion, without my permission, where DeepGuard detected them and soon the error message appeared. I still think there is a lack of harmony between the modules, cohesion, When I get this it will be one of the best, I'm rooting for them.
F-Secure SAFE has had a few bugs here and there -- the static scanner was skipping over files and once in a while the protection used to silently die during the update process.

IT seems like they fixed most if not all those issues in recent times, but it goes to show that AV software can be a different experience.

I've had bad luck with Emsisoft -- my Windows machines heavily rely on network mounted drives and it seems like sometimes the behavior blocker causes 30s Windows lockups. Emsisoft was investigating the last I heard but I haven't had a chance to try this again.
 

SeriousHoax

Level 47
Well-known
Mar 16, 2019
3,630
It is a fact that F-secure has improved by incorporating the Avira mechanism, but I still think that F-secure itself is confused with so many modules, it is not managing to put them all in Harmony, in my last tests F-secure put doubtful files in the list of exclusion, without my permission, where DeepGuard detected them and soon the error message appeared. I still think there is a lack of harmony between the modules, cohesion, When I get this it will be one of the best, I'm rooting for them.
Also their removal engine has some issues. Often it can't delete malwares even in a static scan. Sometimes auto skip the files and sometimes can't simply delete it.
 

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