Installing antivirus software is so 2014. Bitdefender Box might be the future

Would you buy Bitdefender Box ($199 + $99/Year)?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 4.2%
  • No

    Votes: 43 89.6%
  • I might...

    Votes: 3 6.3%

  • Total voters
    48
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Jack

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Digital Trends Review


PCMag Review:

  • PROS: Elegant design. Protects an unlimited number of local devices on your network. Advanced on-the-go device management. Private Line protects devices even when they're not in your home. Smart setup can augment existing wireless network.

  • CONS: Poor performance as a stand-alone router. Difficult to differentiate devices in network browser. No Web interface.
  • BOTTOM LINE: A paradigm shift for the consumer security industry, Bitdefender Box is a piece of hardware that protects every computer, phone, tablet, and smart device on your network. It does a surprisingly good job, considering it's the first device of its kind.
For decades, consumers have been using antivirus software to protect against all the nasty things on the Internet that could hurt their Mac or Windows computers. This has even extended to mobile phones, and now even Android antivirus is a growing software category. But the Bitdefender Box destroys this model. Instead of a software solution, the Bitdefender Box is a piece of hardware that connects to your network and protects all of your devices; from your phone, to your fridge, to your computer, to your PlayStation, and more. It's a completely new paradigm in consumer security.

The Bitdefender Box costs $199 and comes with one free year of service. After that, protection costs $99 a year for an unlimited number of devices. The Box isn't cheap, but it actually works out to be quite a bargain: Bitdefender Total Security, for example, covers only three computers for $89. And that doesn't include protection for mobile devices, or Internet of Things devices, either. Once you really start thinking about how many devices connect to your Wi-Fi network, the Box quickly starts to look like a sweet deal.

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The Hardware
Extremely small and light, the Bitdefender box measures 1.1 by 3.5 by 3.5 inches (HWD) and weighs a mere 3.25 ounces.It looks like a thicker, white Apple TV$69.00 at Groupon with a downward facing blue LED that gives the front of the Box an otherworldly glow. The comparison to Apple is a compliment to the Box's design, but it was apparently a hard-won success. Bitdefender told us that the process of selecting the materials and finish for the Box was an arduous one, but the effort clearly paid off.

Nexus 5$399.00 at Amazonphone and a Nexus 7$191.00 at Amazon tablet and had no trouble accessing the Box settings that way.

Bitdefender Box has a long list of supported routers. If you have one of those routers, the app will communicate through your Wi-Fi network and set up the Box automatically. Our lab testing environment is powered by a Netgear Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band WiFi$299.99 at Dell router and has a variety of devices connected. This router wasn't supported by the Box, but it was included in Bitdefender's manual setup documentation. The entire process of manually configuring the router took about 15 minutes from start to finish. It wasn't particularly challenging, but it did test our patience.

Once set up, we were pleasantly surprised that the device performance impact on a network secured by the Box was so slight. The difference between having the Box on the network and no Box was less than 5 percent, with speeds dropping to 176Mbps, down from 184Mbps at a distance of 15 feet.

Since this is a consumer product, we wanted to see how the experience would be on a typical home's Internet connection and so set up the Box on a residential DSL line at PCMag's secret Brooklyn laboratory. This connection used PPPoE, which Box supposedly supported though we triggered an error every time we entered the username and password. This was one instance where the lack of detail on the app was really frustrating. Some login screens allow you to view your password in plaintext to check for typos. There's no way to do that with the Box app. We cut-pasted the password from LastPass$12.00 at LastPass, keyed it in carefully, and each time we are sure we are giving the correct credentials, all to no avail.

In the end, we tried a cable modem with DHCP. This time, the setup experience was seamless. It's what BitDefender promised, and it delivered.

BitDefender said the company had originally created a Web interface for configuring Box, but decided it was too complicated for users. There is also a good security reason, since putting a Web interface means you are essentially running a (albeit, small) Web server on the device. Dropping the Web interface is a smart security move, but it may be a smidgen ahead of its time.

Read more Bitdefender Box
 
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Atlas147

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Nice concept but very obviously flawed, what if the malware uses a packer that blocks detection until it has been unpacked? What if malware downloader loads the malware through HTTPS? What about zipped files which are encrypted with a password and would only be detected after they are unzipped? With so many different malware writers out there coming up with new ways to trick users into downloading and running malware on their computer I think bitdefender has to rethink their solution to these issues.
 

jogs

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Why should anybody ever buy BD box as they can get the software AV for free. :D
 
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JakeXPMan

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Why should anybody ever buy BD box as they can get the software AV for free. :D

I agree with free! :)
One reason is because no "paid" solution is guaranteed to keep you safe online. So just having anything is helping out.

A good Free choice can do the job too, such as Bitdefender free + a light firewall Private / Comodo. Cheap as free, and it will probably use a lot less resources as well.
 
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Tani

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Nov 25, 2014
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It means it'll only protect your laptop if it's in your home, what if you take your laptop to university, collage or any workplace? Box wouldn't work over there.
 

Nightwalker

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It means it'll only protect your laptop if it's in your home, what if you take your laptop to university, collage or any workplace? Box wouldn't work over there.

Not exactly, there is a feature to protect even when not in home called "Private Line", but dont know if it will work correctly.

I wont buy and wont recommend for now, too expensive and somewhat limited, but it is a product with great potencial that I will be looking forward.
 

Kate_L

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You can always use Secure DNS, you can make more amazing things with free software.
 
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bunchuu

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Mar 17, 2015
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Why waste 199$ + 99$ per year when you can get a real (free!) Sophos UTM running on almost any old PC you have standing around? The 100 Mbit limit is especially off-putting which doesn't even get accounted for in this review...
there are bunch of firewall OS based on linux that can be installed in old PC just like Endian free firewall etc.
 
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Enju

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Jul 16, 2014
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there are bunch of firewall OS based on linux that can be installed in old PC just like Endian free firewall etc.
There are quite a few indeed but imo Sophos provides the best package since it's geared towards enterprise. It runs good on almost any old dualcore with 2GB of RAM as long as you don't enable all IPS signatures, for everything below those specs I personally would recommend pfSense. :)
 
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