Battle Norton 360 or Bitdefender Total Security?

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Norton 360
Bitdefender Total Security
In-depth Comparison








Chipicao

Level 2
May 17, 2020
88
BitDefender have much better skilled team than Norton, even Kaspersky won Norton.

Norton is not very good dealing with new malware and 0 days attacks. That is the truth.

Just because Norton have much more options to enable and disable, that doesn't mean they are good. Just like Avast, that's a good example. They have a lot of features, but they fail in detecting most of them.

Avast is a nice example, ensures a lot of features, but in the reality it won't work. Just Marketing... That's how Avast works.
Norton is clearly better than Avast, but needs to be focus in improving their products and make it better than before.

I still believing that Kaspersky is one best suites ever, BitDefender is better than in the past. GData will become a good competitor, just wait to see it.
ESET is very good with Signatures, very lighter. I like it.

And yes I have used them, unless GData I only used trial.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
Ok, no problem :)
Okay, I turned my desktop off for a few hours and did a cold boot. No high disk use or CPU by BD on boot. In fact, annoyingly, it didn't update even though it's set to check every hour. So, then I manually updated and no major load happened. Just ~20% cpu and a spike of 50% disk use for about 10 seconds. 🤷‍♂️
 

fabiobr

Level 12
Thread author
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 28, 2019
561
BitDefender have much better skilled team than Norton, even Kaspersky won Norton.

Norton is not very good dealing with new malware and 0 days attacks. That is the truth.

Just because Norton have much more options to enable and disable, that doesn't mean they are good. Just like Avast, that's a good example. They have a lot of features, but they fail in detecting most of them.

Avast is a nice example, ensures a lot of features, but in the reality it won't work. Just Marketing... That's how Avast works.
Norton is clearly better than Avast, but needs to be focus in improving their products and make it better than before.

I still believing that Kaspersky is one best suites ever, BitDefender is better than in the past. GData will become a good competitor, just wait to see it.
ESET is very good with Signatures, very lighter. I like it.

And yes I have used them, unless GData I only used trial.
Indeed, Norton fired a lot of researches and is passing by a restructuring.

But Sonar is still very good, and they have now data protector, backup too. That really interest me.

But yeah, nothing compares to Kaspersky and Bitdefender labs research, they are pioneers today. Although I think this affects little the final end home consumer.
 
Last edited:

RoboMan

Level 34
Verified
Top Poster
Content Creator
Well-known
Jun 24, 2016
2,399
Definitely BitDefender. This doesn't mean Norton ain't good.

As for proactive detection, we're talking probably about the two best behaviour blockers there are (ATD vs SONAR). I find them both to be really accurate and powerful; although I've always found SONAR to take longer to deal with found malware. Talking about two of the most known and powerful suites in the market, I doubt any of these will let you down. But, as far as I have tested on a closed, home enviroment, BitDefender did better on my personal machine, since Norton failed to remove several malware files.

As for performance, BitDefender 2020 version is for me one of the lightest AV in the market. I tried to test Norton's performance, and I did feel it a bit heavier, althought it may have been a placebo effect. Nevertheless, I googled that and checked AV-Comparatives "performance test" for April 2020, and here are the results:
1596835552274.png

A real "complaint" I have about Norton is the fact that EVERY TIME I try to uninstall one of their products, something goes wrong. Leftovers, BSOD, broken boot, something.

Something great about BTS 2020 is that it's kind of install and forget. Earlier this year when I tried Norton I had to tweak some options in the configuration menu for better protection. Not an issue for me, maybe for begginers?

All in all, two solid piece of software, I'd stick with BitDefender, secure, light, and private. Oh also, you mentioned privacy. Symantec is from the U.S.A. That's all I'm gonna say regarding the subject. =P
 

oldschool

Level 81
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Mar 29, 2018
7,044
Definitely BitDefender. This doesn't mean Norton ain't good.

As for proactive detection, we're talking probably about the two best behaviour blockers there are (ATD vs SONAR). I find them both to be really accurate and powerful; although I've always found SONAR to take longer to deal with found malware. Talking about two of the most known and powerful suites in the market, I doubt any of these will let you down. But, as far as I have tested on a closed, home enviroment, BitDefender did better on my personal machine, since Norton failed to remove several malware files.

As for performance, BitDefender 2020 version is for me one of the lightest AV in the market. I tried to test Norton's performance, and I did feel it a bit heavier, althought it may have been a placebo effect. Nevertheless, I googled that and checked AV-Comparatives "performance test" for April 2020, and here are the results:

A real "complaint" I have about Norton is the fact that EVERY TIME I try to uninstall one of their products, something goes wrong. Leftovers, BSOD, broken boot, something.

Something great about BTS 2020 is that it's kind of install and forget. Earlier this year when I tried Norton I had to tweak some options in the configuration menu for better protection. Not an issue for me, maybe for begginers?

All in all, two solid piece of software, I'd stick with BitDefender, secure, light, and private. Oh also, you mentioned privacy. Symantec is from the U.S.A. That's all I'm gonna say regarding the subject. =P
Nice product overview.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
Definitely BitDefender. This doesn't mean Norton ain't good.

As for proactive detection, we're talking probably about the two best behaviour blockers there are (ATD vs SONAR). I find them both to be really accurate and powerful; although I've always found SONAR to take longer to deal with found malware. Talking about two of the most known and powerful suites in the market, I doubt any of these will let you down. But, as far as I have tested on a closed, home enviroment, BitDefender did better on my personal machine, since Norton failed to remove several malware files.

As for performance, BitDefender 2020 version is for me one of the lightest AV in the market. I tried to test Norton's performance, and I did feel it a bit heavier, althought it may have been a placebo effect. Nevertheless, I googled that and checked AV-Comparatives "performance test" for April 2020, and here are the results:

A real "complaint" I have about Norton is the fact that EVERY TIME I try to uninstall one of their products, something goes wrong. Leftovers, BSOD, broken boot, something.

Something great about BTS 2020 is that it's kind of install and forget. Earlier this year when I tried Norton I had to tweak some options in the configuration menu for better protection. Not an issue for me, maybe for begginers?

All in all, two solid piece of software, I'd stick with BitDefender, secure, light, and private. Oh also, you mentioned privacy. Symantec is from the U.S.A. That's all I'm gonna say regarding the subject. =P
Have you updated to the latest version? I wonde
Definitely BitDefender. This doesn't mean Norton ain't good.

As for proactive detection, we're talking probably about the two best behaviour blockers there are (ATD vs SONAR). I find them both to be really accurate and powerful; although I've always found SONAR to take longer to deal with found malware. Talking about two of the most known and powerful suites in the market, I doubt any of these will let you down. But, as far as I have tested on a closed, home enviroment, BitDefender did better on my personal machine, since Norton failed to remove several malware files.

As for performance, BitDefender 2020 version is for me one of the lightest AV in the market. I tried to test Norton's performance, and I did feel it a bit heavier, althought it may have been a placebo effect. Nevertheless, I googled that and checked AV-Comparatives "performance test" for April 2020, and here are the results:

A real "complaint" I have about Norton is the fact that EVERY TIME I try to uninstall one of their products, something goes wrong. Leftovers, BSOD, broken boot, something.

Something great about BTS 2020 is that it's kind of install and forget. Earlier this year when I tried Norton I had to tweak some options in the configuration menu for better protection. Not an issue for me, maybe for begginers?

All in all, two solid piece of software, I'd stick with BitDefender, secure, light, and private. Oh also, you mentioned privacy. Symantec is from the U.S.A. That's all I'm gonna say regarding the subject. =P
Have you upgraded to the new version or are you still on 2020?
 
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SeriousHoax

Level 47
Well-known
Mar 16, 2019
3,630
Okay, I turned my desktop off for a few hours and did a cold boot. No high disk use or CPU by BD on boot. In fact, annoyingly, it didn't update even though it's set to check every hour. So, then I manually updated and no major load happened. Just ~20% cpu and a spike of 50% disk use for about 10 seconds. 🤷‍♂️
Don't know about 2021 TS version but I tried Bitdefender free again and at startup it tortures my laptop for 10 minutes. One time I even saw the space on my C drive started to reduce from 38gb to 32 gb continuously then restored back to 38gb again after 10 minutes. I don't remember having such problem before. Don't know if it's related to Windows 2004 compatibility or something else. Maybe Bitdefender is indirectly telling me to upgrade my system.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
Don't know about 2021 TS version but I tried Bitdefender free again and at startup it tortures my laptop for 10 minutes. One time I even saw the space on my C drive started to reduce from 38gb to 32 gb continuously then restored back to 38gb again after 10 minutes. I don't remember having such problem before. Don't know if it's related to Windows 2004 compatibility or something else. Maybe Bitdefender is indirectly telling me to upgrade my system.
Holy cow! I’m on 2004 and definitely don’t see that behavior. I’d uninstall if I did. Very odd, my system is not incredibly new by any means. Stupid BD doesn’t even update on boot or wake until an hour has passed for me...so I have the opposite problem. Maybe it has to do with “optimizers”? I don’t use Total Security, I hated that it messed with my windows settings with its optimizers on install.
 

SeriousHoax

Level 47
Well-known
Mar 16, 2019
3,630
Holy cow! I’m on 2004 and definitely don’t see that behavior. I’d uninstall if I did. Very odd, my system is not incredibly new by any means. Stupid BD doesn’t even update on boot or wake until an hour has passed for me...so I have the opposite problem. Maybe it has to do with “optimizers”? I don’t use Total Security, I hated that it messed with my windows settings with its optimizers on install.
We have the total opposite problem! 😄 Two new bugs for Bitdefender I guess.
 

blackice

Level 38
Verified
Top Poster
Well-known
Apr 1, 2019
2,731
I haven't, no. Haven't had the time to do it. Important product updates usually need some follow-up in case something goes wrong and I haven't had the time. Is there something wrong with the new version?
Nothing really different to me. Actually still has the same bug where game mode starts when Battlenet or the Epic Game Store are running. Which they say is not reproducible. Oh except they took out the optimizers and safe files. I hated the optimizer and like safe files...so a wash.
 

The Ordynary

Level 3
Apr 26, 2020
105
norton is better at the moment, bitdefender devours many features of the machine, and the new version just changed the interface, it seems that it has not improved at all and is a product that needs many improvements, I think it is difficult even for the company to change its product since it would have to replace the engine completely, which is expensive and time consuming, that is, bitdefender is that type of software that needs to be remade from scratch, different from eset or Avira which are compact products mainly avira, and just need to add an efficient behavior module.
 
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Paul.R

Level 17
Verified
Well-known
May 16, 2013
844
Bitdefender is written in asm, programs in that language are ESET, Kaspersky(I'm not %100 sure),etc. they don't need to rewrite their engine from scratch, they need to improve, they need to look closely to Photon Technology plus in Bitdefender you find AVC, B-Have, Machine learning all the tools you need for not depending entirely on signature.
 

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