[Proof] Why I switched from Local AV (Bkav) to Bitdefender: 1s vs 2 hours scan.

BaoAshura

Subject: Eye-opening comparison: Bitdefender’s thoroughness vs. a local AV’s surface scanning
Hello everyone,
I am a user from Vietnam, and I would like to share a recent experience that completely changed my perspective on cyber security, specifically why I decided to switch from a local antivirus (Bkav Pro) to Bitdefender.
Recently, I performed a scan on a folder containing 185 compressed files (.rar, .zip) on my brand-new PC. The results were shocking:
• Local AV (Bkav Pro): It claimed to have scanned all 185 items in just 1 second. It reported "0 threats found." This clearly indicates that it only scanned the "surface" (file names/extensions) without actually extracting or inspecting the content inside the archives.
• Bitdefender: On the exact same 185 compressed files, Bitdefender took 2 hours and 4 seconds to complete. Most importantly, it identified and scanned 14,573 individual objects inside those archives. It also correctly flagged 4 password-protected files that I chose to skip. I believe that if I had provided the passwords for those 4 files, the total number of scanned objects would easily have exceeded 15,000.
As a user, this was a huge "wake-up call." The local AV gave me a "false sense of security" with its 1-second scan, while Bitdefender did the actual heavy lifting—decompressing and inspecting every single file to ensure my system was truly clean.
In the past, I was influenced by marketing videos in my country showing this local AV "cleaning millions of viruses," but my real-world test proved that Bitdefender’s technology and "Deep Scanning" capability are on a completely different level. Furthermore, the lack of a proper Rescue Environment in the local software makes it incomparable to Bitdefender’s comprehensive protection.
I am now a proud Bitdefender user and feel much safer knowing that those 14,000+ hidden files have been thoroughly vetted.
I commit that these are 100% real photos of the scan results from both Bkav Pro and Bitdefender. No photo editing or manipulation was involved.
Bitdefender verry good !
Greetings from Vietnam!

Alexandru_BD

Hello and thank you for joining us here, and for choosing Bitdefender.

This strongly suggests the scanner you mentioned only looked at file names, extensions or very minimal metadata, not actual contents. This explains the short duration of scan, almost instant, which never occurs with a strong antivirus. Basically, that didn't scan anything, it's actually a surface scan that gives a false sense of security…

Bitdefender uses multiple techniques together to detect malware. For starters, it uses signature based scanning, and updates signatures frequently so it can identify known threats by matching code patterns. The traditional antivirus uses a database of known malware signatures, so this is usually how they work. Secondly, it also relies on behavioural or heuristic analysis, not just static signatures. It analyzes behavior and patterns of code at runtime and this is extremely useful for detecting new or modified malware that signatures might miss. Furthermore, Bitdefender’s engines may use cloud lookups to speed up scanning decisions or check suspicious items against a large database without storing everything locally.

A thorough scan often takes hours on large drives or with many compressed files. But this is the first sign that the antivirus does its job and performs a detailed check, not just scratching the surface…

Bitdefender’s thorough scan detected tens of thousands of objects because it actually unpacked and inspected them, whereas the local AV didn’t, by the looks of it..

One more thing to keep in mind here: the speed of a System Scan depends on many factors such as system specifications, large volumes of data, the computer resources in use by another software, if it’s the first scan since installing Bitdefender, and most importantly, the number of archives & over-compressed files/backups. With every system scan, Bitdefender will index the files that have already been scanned, and the scan time will greatly decrease.

I hope the information is useful and thanks once again for your appreciation.

Regards