What Is Bitdefender Premium VPN

Speed During Daily Use

Using Bitdefender VPN day-to-day was a true pleasure. We enjoyed seamless streaming, fast downloads, and smooth browsing without any lag or sudden disconnects. Streaming videos on Netflix, , and Crunchyroll went without a single buffer circle. For online gaming, however, we suggest letting the client choose the server automatically. This will usually be the one closest to you, with the lowest ping.

Server Network Bitdefender VPN

When it comes to server networks, the bigger, the better is our golden rule. Having more locations increases your chances of . For example, connecting to a U.S. server allows you to access the best version of Netflix. Extensive server networks also help with heavy censorship: if youre in China, you can connect to servers elsewhere to enjoy censorship-free internet. Finally, larger networks prevent server crowding, avoiding server lag due to an excessive number of users.

The main takeaway here:

• Bitdefender VPN features 1,300+ servers around the world.
• Dedicated IPs are currently unavailable.

Bitdefender VPN Features Overview

The Premium VPN rates look great compared to many other VPNs, but dont forget youre paying that price on top of whatever you paid for Bitdefender itself. For example, if you got the VPN through Total Security for five devices, add $3.75 every month.

Once you do that, the cost falls into line with most other VPN services. If you get Bitdefender only on one device, this is actually one of the most cost-effective VPNs, but that solution is available only for Windows users.

The payment methods are pretty limited. It supports only credit cards, PayPal and bank transfers internationally no cryptocurrency . In the U.S., you can also send a check or pay cash at a 7-Eleven or Ace Hardware location, though the website is extremely light on the details of how. Frankly, wed rather have bitcoin as an option.

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Is Bitdefender VPN Any Good

While Bitdefender is an amazing antivirus provider, their VPN can leave mixed feelings. On the one hand, it relies on one of the fastest tunneling protocols, includes kill switch, split tunneling, and customizable auto-connect.

On the other hand, their logging extent isn’t clear, there are no published audit reports, and the tunnelling protocol suite could be better suited for more usage cases. Streaming also isn’t one of their strengths.

If you’re getting this service as a bundle with an antivirus, you could score a pretty good bundle. While their VPN isn’t quite on the same level as their antivirus, it shouldn’t be dismissed. With continuous improvement, I could see this service becoming a versatile VPN to rival current market leaders.

Secure All Your Traffic On Public Networks

Public networks like airports, lounges, hotels, restaurants and shopping malls are easy targets for those trying to capture and exploit your traffic. Connect your virtual private network to any of our servers to secure your traffic with military-grade encryption, making it impossible for anyone to access it.

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Services And Features Offered By Bitdefender Premium VPN

Bitdefender Premium VPN is a secure VPN that offers all the basic features that one would expect from a VPN. When using the service, you get complete anonymity for your online activities. This means that even your internet service provider cannot track your online activity and conduct. You can use this VPN for torrenting and streaming.

You can use the VPN to allow you to access region-blocked services as well. For example, you can use the VPN to access Netflixs US content even though that might not be available in your own country. However, it should be noted that Bitdefenders services are not available in China. Additionally, other streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ may also not be available when using this VPN.

Also, as with any other VPN, you can also download content through torrents that would otherwise be unavailable. The VPN access allows you to make such downloads without being tracked by governmental authorities or others.

In addition to these basic features, the Bitdefender Premium VPN also provides certain value-added features which are not common amongst other VPN providers.

Here is a breakdown of such features.

Use Up to 10 Devices Simultaneously

Unlimited Encrypted Data

This VPN service does not place any limit on the amount of encrypted data you can send back and forth, unlike other VPN providers. With Bitdefender, you can browse the internet and download as many files as you like without incurring any additional costs.

No Traffic Logs

Servers And Countries Coverage

ExpressVPN is not short of servers and locations offering 3,000 servers, with 160 locations and 94 countries covered.

Along with excellent coverage in the United States, UK, and Canada, the provider offers servers in countries that include the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.

It even offers servers in countries bypassed by other providers, including Vietnam and Hong Kong.

Servers are reliable and all offer blazing-fast speeds. Plus they have no trouble bypassing censorship in China along with beating Netflix restrictions.

Bitdefender is a bit of a let-down compared to ExpressVPN, covering just 27 countries, which is relatively poor.

The provider seems to mainly focus on countries in Europe. There is no information about the total number of servers offered, which is a disappointment. Due to a lack of information, it is extremely difficult to test the reliability of the servers, which again is disappointing.

When testing the servers we did find that they were heavily loaded, which, of course, affects the speed as it slows them down.

The servers are not reccomended for overcoming censorship in China, nor for unblocking and streaming Netflix.

As you will probably have guessed in the servers round of this ExpressVPN or Bitdefender battle, the former wins again due to covering a huge part of the world with extremely fast servers.

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When Should I Use Bitdefender VPN

If you decide to use it — and we arent saying you should — its best for people who are already using Bitdefenders other products.If you have the Premium VPN service, you should turn it on whenever you plan to connect to the internet through any app. If youre working with 200MB of data per day from the free Basic version, turn the VPN on only for potentially sensitive actions, like sending files or making purchases.

Streaming: Does Bitdefender VPN Work With Netflix

Unfortunately, Bitdefender VPN isn’t the best VPN for those who want to unblock various streaming platforms.

For example, it didn’t manage to unblock Netflix. The webpage worked, and it didn’t show any proxy warning messages. However, the US-exclusive content remained hidden. I was shown only the stuff that is officially available in my country.

Netflix aside, Bitdefender VPN didn’t unblock DAZN and Hulu. The former is one of the services that very few providers manage to unblock, so it wasn’t a surprise after the Netflix fiasco. Meanwhile, Hulu didn’t even allow to sign in to the account.

Overall, if you’re interested only in streaming services like BBC iPlayer or YouTube, this VPN could be recommended. Both of them can be unblocked. Yet, if you start to look into other streaming services, it cannot be guaranteed that Bitdefender VPN will bypass all geographical restrictions. This makes it a subpar choice for streaming.

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Bitdefender : Antivirus Protection

Whenever Bitdefender’s malware-scanning engine encounters what may be a new piece of malware, it uploads the suspicious item to Bitdefender’s online testing lab for analysis. New malware signatures are distributed several times daily to the 500 million systems protected by Bitdefender products.

These uploads will include some information about your system and what it was doing when a new threat was detected. If you’d rather Bitdefender not know that, you can opt out of this data collection.

Bitdefender blocks potentially unwanted applications , fileless malware and bootkits. It also guards the integrity of files and automatically copies files under attack from encrypting ransomware so that you have backup copies.

The Profiles feature monitors what you’re doing and tailors the protection accordingly. There are preset profiles for work, movie, games and public Wi-Fi.

Bitdefender no longer offers the free downloadable Bitdefender Rescue CD, which booted a severely infected system into Linux for a complete scan and cleaning. Bitdefender paid software still creates the similar Bitdefender Rescue Environment in a hidden hard-drive partition during installation, but the Rescue Partition now uses a sandboxed version of Windows 10 instead of Linux to remove persistent threats.

In November-December 2020 testing by the Germany-based AV-Test lab, Bitdefender’s malware-scanning engine detected 100% of both brand-new “zero-day” malware and known “widespread” malware.

Is Bitdefender Right For You Or Your Business

All in all, if youre after a simple and cheap VPN for personal use, Bitdefender is a decent pick. Small businesses arent going to like that this VPN provider doesnt offer more robust featuresspecifically, especially a dedicated IP address.

Sure, the overall company offers great cybersecurity tools, but that doesnt mean you need to go with their VPN.

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Bitdefender VPN Review Fast Secure And Affordable

Since its inception in 2001, Bitdefender has amassed more than half a billion users. The Romanian giant is one of the biggest names in cybersecurity, mostly thanks to its antivirus. Its VPN, though, was often dismissed as Hotspot Shields little brother and only used as a free add-on to premium antivirus packages. Yet, it gradually evolved into a standalone service worthy of the brand.

In spite of some bad press, Bitdefenders VPN has a lot of things going for it. Excellent speed, solid security, low price, just to name a few. Our tests revealed anything but a white-label Hotspot Shield. We saw a fully-fledged VPN in its own right. It even had a lot of surprising tricks under the hood.

Learn all about this up-and-coming premium service in our Bitdefender VPN review.

New Bitdefender Premium VPN Features

There are several new additions the Premium tier of Bitdefender, perhaps the most notable being the kill switch function. Bitdefender has received criticism in the past for not offering this feature, while several of its competitors do. Its addition now makes Bitdefender’s VPN a real viable option when considering which provider to opt for.

A VPN kill switch is a useful tool to aid in protecting the user from having their identity discovered or risk personal data being exposed. When enabled, the feature acts as a fail safe should the VPN connection fail. In usual circumstances, a device would fall back on its traditional connection meaning that traffic and activity would be routed through your ISP. As this doesn’t have the level of privacy protection offered by a VPN, it would immediately compromise a user’s data and viewing habits.

A kill switch will, as the name suggests, simply stop the internet dead, should the VPN connection fail. The user can choose then to reconnect via VPN or revert back to their standard connection.

In addition to the kill switch, Bitdefender has also redesigned its core , and is now, according to Bitdefender, 25% faster.

Lastly, the user interface has also seen an upgrade, and users are now able to enable a dark mode.

Bitdefender isn’t just in the VPN business of course. It also offers anti-virus software.

• forward

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Hands On With Bitdefender Premium VPN For Android

To test Bitdefender’s Android VPN, we used a Samsung A71 running Android 11. The Bitdefender Premium VPN app has a very clean interface featuring a world map made of little circles. You choose your VPN location by using the button at the bottom of the screen, triggering a short animation showing the bits traveling to their new destination.

Bitdefender VPNs Android edition features auto-connect on public Wi-Fi, an internet Kill Switch, and split-tunneling for both apps and websites. You can also switch from Light mode to Dark mode in the Settings section of the app, and you can also choose to allow access to other devices on the local network.

A VPN is a great way to protect your information while browsing online, but you need to make sure its working properly. To do this, we went to DNSLeakTest.com and ran an extended test while connected to a server in Argentina. This showed that our real IP address was hidden and that our DNS information was not leaked.

We then went to YouTube and watched a few videos while connected to the Argentine server. The videos loaded quickly and played at the highest resolution without any problems. We also watched a couple of Twitch streams. Each loaded and played at the source quality without any stuttering or buffering.

Bitdefender Premium VPN Pricing

It’s good to see Bitdefender has added a monthly billing option since our last review. It looked great value, too, at $6.99 , but the website described this as ‘billed $6.99 for the first month.’ Did this mean it increased on renewal?

We couldn’t see a renewal price or a link to find out, so we opened a live chat window with support. Despite telling us we were #1 in the queue and would be talking to someone in 1-3 minutes, we actually waited for 10 minutes. Although our question was purely about the product, the agent insisted on looking up our account details, which took another six minutes. But finally, they told us there was no increase on renewal. Monthly billing is as good value as it looks.

The annual plan does have a special introductory price of $2.49 a month for year one, $4.17 on renewal. You can pay by card, PayPal or bank transfer, and there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee if the service doesn’t work out for you.

That’s notably cheaper than the VPN heavyweights of ExpressVPN and NordVPN, although there are better deals around, especially if you’re willing to sign up for a longer contract. Private Internet Access charges only $2.19 a month on its’ three-year plan, for instance, and throws in simple antivirus for free.

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Bitdefender Premium VPN Reviews Online

Finally, wed like to discuss how users feel about Bitdefender. Is it the best-rated VPN?

We checked the community-based vpnmentor website, which rated the service an average 5.4 out of 10 stars. Overall, Bitdefender ranked 257 out of 290 VPN services in popularity.

Other reviews we found for Bitdefender were largely positive. Even though Bitdefenders service is not the best VPN software out there, they are a solid option at a reasonable price point.

The main advantages that Bitdefender offers over other services are the high speeds thanks to their Hydra Catapult VPN protocol as well as the ability to unblock Netflix. Bitdefender is also considered a good VPN for Chrome.

Is Bitdefender VPN Safe To Use

Bitdefender VPN uses military-grade encryption to encode your traffic. This means that your IP address will be masked, and your personal information will be kept well out of reach of any potential hackers.

It also offers the following tunneling protocols:

• IKEv2
• Hotspot Shields Catapult Hydra
• L2TP/IPsec

While the first three options are legit, I would advise against using L2TP/IPSec. Its considered to be already outdated, especially since the WireGuard protocol has become available. Unfortunately, Bitdefender is yet to implement it.

When it comes to security and privacy features in 2021, Bitdefender Premium VPN has little to offer. The only option is to turn on the kill switch, which is disabled by default. Without it, your personal data may be exposed in case of a VPN failure.

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Hands On With Bitdefender Premium VPN For Windows

There are Bitdefender Premium VPN apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. In our testing, we used an Intel NUC Kit NUC8i7BEH desktop running the latest version of Windows 10. To use Bitdefender Premium VPN, you will need to create an account with Bitdefender Central, the company’s online service hub. Unlike Mullvad VPN or ExpressVPN, you will use the usual username and password combination to access the app. Frustratingly, Bitdefender Premium VPN did not allow us to copy paste our complex and unique password from our password manager.

The Bitdefender Premium VPN app brings many design features we associate with mobile applications. The entire app stays within a single, vertically oriented window, with a black rail of buttons running down the left side. Its grey and white interface is very clean, punctuated with accents of blue and purple. It’s a good first impression, but one that lacks the panache and friendliness of TunnelBear VPN.

We like that the app has a large connect button, making it very easy to get online and tell whether or not you’re connected to the VPN. Other nice touches include an optional dark mode, and a Dashboard section that shows cards with various connection stats.

Short On Time Here Are My Key Findings:

• Unblocks several streaming services: Bitdefender was able to unblock several of the streaming services I tested it with, including Hulu, Netflix US and UK, and BBC iPlayer. Find the full results here.
• Server speeds: High-speed servers for P2P/torrenting activities, in most places. I did have a bit of an issue with lag on the Australian and Hong Kong servers due to high ping. See my full tests here.
• Security: While it does offer a kill switch for mobile apps, the rest of the security is fairly basic. It offers wi-fi protection and Auto-On, as well as industry-standard encryption. See more about these features here.
• Privacy: The HotSpot Shield servers are no-logs as per its policy, but Bitdefenders VPN app does collect some user information. Check here for more on privacy.
• User-friendly apps: The app was quick to download and install, and just as easy to set up and navigate. I had a bit of an issue finding customer support though. Get more information on that here.
• Money-back guarantee: It offers a 7-day free trial, as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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