The phrase "security suite" covers a lot of ground. Antivirus and firewall are essential components, and some suites don't go much beyond those basics. Others add just about every security feature you might want, and then some. Bitdefender Total Security (2014) ($79.95 per year for three licenses) falls into the latter category, the kind of product I call a "mega-suite," and its many components all do their jobs well.

At first glance, this product hardly looks different from the less feature-rich Bitdefender Internet Security, or even from the standalone Bitdefender Antivirus Plus. All three reflect current security status with a green, yellow, or red banner, and all three display four panels at a time, representing four security components; a slider lets you bring the other components into view. The antivirus has a total of six component panels, the basic suite brings that number up to nine, and Total Security maxes out with a dozen panels. You can rearrange the order of the panels so that your four favorites are the ones that appear at startup.

Like Norton, Kaspersky, and others, Bitdefender has stopped using a version number or year in the product title. To help distinguish this review from later no-number reviews, I've appended "(2014)" to the name.

Shared Antivirus Protection

Bitdefender Total Security's antivirus protection is exactly the same as what you get from Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014)£19.99 at Bitdefender UK. For full details on the shared features, please read that review. Here, I'll just summarize.

Getting Bitdefender installed on twelve systems crawling with malware required some help from tech support, especially for one system that was temporarily disabled by the install-time scan. A product that installs hassle-free gets five stars for ease of installation; Bitdefender earned three stars.

In my malware removal test, Bitdefender scored 6.6 points, the best of any product tested using my current collection of malware samples. Tested using my previous collection, Norton 360 (2013)SEE IT and Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013£48.79 at Webroot UK also scored 6.6, as did Comodo Internet Security Complete 2013.

For a full explanation of my malware blocking test, see How We Test Malware Removal.

Bitdefender Total Security (2014) malware removal chart

Bitdefender's Web-based scanner detected 91 percent of the malicious URLs I tried to visit, which is very good. In my full malware-blocking test it earned 9.0 points. Of products tested with the same malware samples, only Ad-Aware Pro Security 10.5 did better, with 9.4 of 10 possible points. Webroot beat all products tested with the previous malware collection, scoring an impressive 9.9 points. The article How We Test Malware Blocking explains my testing methodology.

Bitdefender Total Security (2014) malware blocking chart

In tests by the independent antivirus labs, Bitdefender outscores all other vendors. The chart below summarizes recent lab test results. For more information about the labs and their tests, see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.

Bitdefender Total Security (2014) lab tests chart