Bitdefender Premium VPN Review – Tech Advisor

Bitdefender is best known for its antivirus, but has branched out into VPNs by partnering with Hotspot Shield. Since it initially launched the service, as part of its Total Security suite, it has made VPN a completely standalone service, with separate apps and the ability to pay for VPN only.

There are also other changes and improvements, such as the addition of a kill switch, more options to automatically connect to the VPN, split tunneling, and support for popular streaming services, allowing you to look if you are in another area.

Its network has also grown significantly, with over 4,000 servers now covering 53 countries.

The low monthly cost of the one-year subscription also sounds tempting, but is Bitdefender a worthy rival to NordVPN and others? Let’s find out.

Features and Apps

You can get Bitdefender Premium VPN for Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS. Unfortunately, there are no apps for smart TVs or streamers like Amazon Firestick. There are also no browser extensions or an option to run the VPN on your router to protect all of your devices.

Features vary by operating system. Windows and Android, as usual with VPNs, get the most out of it. This means “proper” split tunneling where you can choose which apps use the VPN or not, but on iOS and macOS you can only choose websites that bypass the encrypted connection.

Likewise, while you get a basic “Auto-connect on public Wi-Fi” option on iPhone, on Windows there’s a lot more control. You can choose to sign in each time you launch a peer-to-peer app, or even set your own list of apps and websites.

By and large, the apps will use Hotspot Shield’s proprietary encryption protocol, Hydra, but there’s the option of WireGuard and OpenVPN on Android. On iOS you can choose the outdated IPsec protocol, but on Windows you have no choice. Bitdefender announces that it will deploy WireGuard to all applications “very soon”.

The apps have a slightly updated interface and are simple to use. You can just press the “Power” button to connect to the optimal server, or you can choose a country from the list.

Only Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States have multiple locations: three in Canada, two in the United Kingdom and 15 in the United States.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There is no way to access favorite locations, but the last used one will be selected the next time you log in. Even in the Windows app where there is a new dashboard view, you can only see your “Top Connected Locations”.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The apps keep it simple and don’t show how busy each slot is or its ping. And that’s mainly because you can’t see the individual servers: choose a country and the server is automatically chosen for you.

Another new feature is an ad blocker and anti-tracker. You can activate them individually and you will find them in all applications.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The wording “Powered by Hotspot Shield” has been moved from the home screen and hidden in the About section of the settings, and that’s because Bitdefender is just using Hotspot Shield’s service and making it available through its own app. .

Jim Martin / Foundry

Surprisingly, Bitdefender Premium VPN is much cheaper than you can buy Hotspot Shield’s standalone VPN service.

It should be noted, however, that Bitdefender does not offer live chat service like many other VPN services. So if you need technical support, be prepared to wait for an email response if you can’t find a solution in the online support articles.

Privacy

One of the biggest concerns with any VPN service is the privacy policy. This describes exactly how much information – if any – it logs about you and your use of the service. Bitdefender says it only collects enough information to provide the service, such as device IDs and hashed IP addresses.

Today, Hotspot Shield is owned by Pango (formerly AnchorFree), which itself is owned by Aura. Exactly who does what with your data isn’t surprisingly clear in Bitdefender’s privacy policy, but either way, Aura is a US-based company. The United States does not have privacy-friendly laws for data retention and HotSpot Shield has not had a recent audit to confirm that it does not log your data.

Ultimately this means that while Bitdefender Premium VPN may be safe to use, it is still far less reassuring compared to using a VPN which To was recently audited.

Of course, you might not care too much about privacy. Which brings us to performance.

Performance

We used a gigabit broadband connection that has the same upload and download speeds to test Bitdefender. As usual, we tested with the Windows app and Ookla Speedtest. The results are not pretty.

While the speeds may be fast enough for you, and potentially faster than your own broadband connection, they are considerably slower than the fastest service offering. Download speeds were particularly poor, with even the server relatively close to New York slowing our connection from around 900 Mbps to under 60 Mbps.

Using auto-ranging improved things considerably, with a much closer server in San Jose delivering over 750 Mbps down and 680 Mbps up. So Bitdefender is capable of great speed, but chances are you won’t get them if you have to choose a remote server.

Jim Martin / Foundry

We found no issues when checking for IP and DNS leaks, which is good.

There was a problem, however. Although Bitdefender told us it was now able to unblock popular streaming services, we couldn’t watch BBC iPlayer or other UK-based video services when connected to one of the UK servers. . It also wouldn’t allow us to log in and watch shows on Australia’s 9Now service.

But if you’re only interested in Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and other US-based services, you should be fine, as Bitdefender unblocked those without issue.

Pricing & Availability

Upgrading to Premium VPN costs £2.50/$2.50 per month and you only have to commit for a year, which is half (or even a third) of the time many VPNs want you to. pay in advance. You still have to pay the £29.99/$29.99 all at once, and that doubles when your subscription renews from month 13.

Likewise, it’s nice to see a more affordable one-month subscription: most VPNs charge a lot more in order to persuade you to opt for a year or two instead.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There are no anonymous payment options, just the usual card and PayPal payment methods, plus bank transfer.

Verdict

Bitdefender Premium VPN has certainly improved since we first reviewed it, but still isn’t the best choice, despite being reasonably priced. If you’re willing to pay more upfront and don’t mind a two-year subscription, there are a few good alternatives (NordVPN, Surfshark, and Private Internet Access) that offer better overall speeds, a larger selection of apps (which have more features like double VPN), more servers in more locations, and better unblocking of streaming services.

Additionally, many of these rivals (including the three mentioned) also have recent independent audits that reassure them that they aren’t logging anything, which HotspotShield (and Bitdefender) lacks..

If you already have Bitdefender Total Security, you can benefit from the free VPN service when using public Wi-Fi. It’s simple to use and hassle-free.

The big question is whether it’s worth paying for the premium version. Simply put, if you just want a VPN for online privacy and anonymity, that’s perfectly fine and reasonably priced. But if you are more demanding, want to unblock streaming services and have a greater level of security and more settings, you better use NordVPN, PureVPN or

ExpressVPN.

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