For decades, consumers have been using antivirus software to protect against all the nasty things on the Internet that could hurt their Mac or Windows computers. This has even extended to mobile phones, and now even Android antivirus is a growing software category. But the Bitdefender Box destroys this model. Instead of a software solution, the Bitdefender Box is a piece of hardware that connects to your network and protects all of your devices; from your phone, to your fridge, to your computer, to your PlayStation, and more. It's a completely new paradigm in consumer security.
The Bitdefender Box costs $199 and comes with one free year of service. After that, protection costs $99 a year for an unlimited number of devices. The Box isn't cheap, but it actually works out to be quite a bargain: Bitdefender Total Security, for example, covers only three computers for $89. And that doesn't include protection for mobile devices, or Internet of Things devices, either. Once you really start thinking about how many devices connect to your Wi-Fi network, the Box quickly starts to look like a sweet deal.
The Hardware
Extremely small and light, the Bitdefender box measures 1.1 by 3.5 by 3.5 inches (HWD) and weighs a mere 3.25 ounces.It looks like a thicker, white Apple TV ($69.00 at Groupon) with a downward facing blue LED that gives the front of the Box an otherworldly glow. The comparison to Apple is a compliment to the Box's design, but it was apparently a hard-won success. Bitdefender told us that the process of selecting the materials and finish for the Box was an arduous one, but the effort clearly paid off.
Similar Products
Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router (R7000)
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus
Bitdefender Total Security
McAfee LiveSafe
ZyXEL NWA1123-AC 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Dual-Radio Ceiling Mount PoE Access Point
EnGenius EAP1750H 802.11ac 3x3 Dual Band Ceiling-Mount Wireless Access Point/WDS
Panda Free Antivirus
Webroot AntiVirus
Kaspersky Anti-Virus
D-Link AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi Router (DIR-890L/R)
Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Router AC 1900 (WRT1900AC)
The Box is powered by a single-core 400MHz MIPS microprocessor, 16MB Flash memory, and 64MB DDR2 RAM. There are two 10/100 Ethernet ports, a power port, and a reset button in the back. The wireless chipset supports 802.11b/g/n, but we aren't talking top of the line hardware specs here. It's just enough for what it has to do. The LED on the front glows teal when operating normally, flashing teal when being configured, red if there is a problem, and white when it's performing an update.
Setting Up All the Ways
To get started, simply plug the Box into your router via the included Ethernet cable, and then plug the included USB cable and converter into any standard power outlet. The Box requires very little power—we saw one connected to a portable rechargeable battery—so you could conceivably connect it directly to a powered USB port on your router or computer.
Once the Box is connected, you download either its associated Android or iOS app (sorry Windows Phone; you're still protected but you can't configure the Box) and create an account. If you already have a MyBitdefender account from one of the company's other products, you can just sign in with that. We installed the app on both a Nexus 5 ($729.00 at Amazon) phone and a Nexus 7 tablet and had no trouble accessing the Box settings that way.
Bitdefender Box has a long list of supported routers. If you have one of those routers, the app will communicate through your Wi-Fi network and set up the Box automatically. Our lab testing environment is powered by a Netgear Nighthawk X6 AC3200 Tri-Band WiFi ($219.99 at Newegg) router and has a variety of devices connected. This router wasn't supported by the Box, but it was included in Bitdefender's manual setup documentation. The entire process of manually configuring the router took about 15 minutes from start to finish. It wasn't particularly challenging, but it did test our patience.
Once set up, we were pleasantly surprised that the device performance impact on a network secured by the Box was so slight. The difference between having the Box on the network and no Box was less than 5 percent, with speeds dropping to 176Mbps, down from 184Mbps at a distance of 15 feet.
Since this is a consumer product, we wanted to see how the experience would be on a typical home's Internet connection and so set up the Box on a residential DSL line at PCMag's secret Brooklyn laboratory. This connection used PPPoE, which Box supposedly supported though we triggered an error every time we entered the username and password. This was one instance where the lack of detail on the app was really frustrating. Some login screens allow you to view your password in plaintext to check for typos. There's no way to do that with the Box app. We cut-pasted the password from LastPass ($36 Per Year at LastPass) , keyed it in carefully, and each time we are sure we are giving the correct credentials, all to no avail.
In the end, we tried a cable modem with DHCP. This time, the setup experience was seamless. It's what BitDefender promised, and it delivered.
BitDefender said the company had originally created a Web interface for configuring Box, but decided it was too complicated for users. There is also a good security reason, since putting a Web interface means you are essentially running a (albeit, small) Web server on the device. Dropping the Web interface is a smart security move, but it may be a smidgen ahead of its time.
Protecting Everything
When Bitdefender says that the Box protects every device, they mean every device: Your printer, your desktop computer, your laptop, your sundry smartphones, your various tablets, your gaming consoles, your Nest smart thermostat, your smart fridge, your Philips Hue lights, and so on. Many of these devices are completely closed to the user and can't have antivirus protection installed.
The Box protects every device connected to your Wi-Fi network using a super-fast, cloud-based malware detection engine. This includes anyone who connects to the network, for however long they stay connected. If something untoward happens regarding any of the connected devices, Bitdefender will block the threat and send you a message through the app.
This model shifts protection to your Internet connection, stopping bad stuff before it ever reaches your computer. But you can also use the Box app to install a local agent to provide on-device protection for associated Windows, Mac, and Android devices. Think of it as antivirus lite, to keep an eye out against infected USB drives or other offline attacks.
We rely on information from independent labs for many antivirus products, but none of the labs have yet looked at the Bitdefender Box. They have, however, looked at Bitdefender's other software offerings. AV-Test found that Bitdefender Mobile Security detected 100 percent of Android malware, Bitdefender Internet Security detected 100 percent of Windows malware, and Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac detected 100 percent of OS X malware.
Similarly, AV-Comparatives found that Bitdefender's software detected 99 percent of Mac malware, 99.6 percent of Android malware, and 99.8 percent of Windows malware.
Once the agent is installed on your desktop computer, you can use the Box app to trigger OS updates, install patches, and even let you perform basic cleanup actions on the protected computer. We weren't able to test these functions as our Apple iMac was already patched and up-to-date.
In our testing, we found that the Box blocked 16 percent of malicious URLs provided by MRG Effitas. When running this test on antivirus software suites, we've found an industry average of over 30 percent. These somewhat middling scores are a little disappointing considering that the Box is designed to put Internet security first. However, Box's performance is spot-on with its desktop software equivalent from Bitdefender, so at least we know it's probably the same software inside the Box.
We also found that Box successfully blocked infected links in emails, tricky URLs that redirect you from safe sites to suspicious ones, and successfully flagged eight out of 10 phishing URLs from phishtank.com.
Since the purpose of Box is to prevent bad things from coming in from the Web, we didn't subject the Box to our usual battery of live malware tests. However, we did confirm that the Box's antivirus features were operating with the EICAR testing applications. These are benign pieces of software designed to be detected by antivirus engines to ensure malware protection is functioning properly.
Device Management
Once activated, the Box app will populate with the devices on your network. For the average home with just a handful of devices, this will be a snap. For the super-geeky home with tons of devices, it's a little more challenging. On the network tab of the app (the center one) you'll see your Family devices and your Guest devices. Anything that connects to your network will appear as a Guest in the app, identified by cryptic descriptors like "A smart TV" or "BLACKBERRY-B5D9." You can rename these devices, add images, and even associate them with contacts from your address book, but because Bitdefender doesn't show you the MAC or IP address of the devices, figuring out which is which is tricky.
Despite testing across three different testing environments, we never quite got the hang of how to get Box to "see" devices as active. Box would clearly display a Blackberry device in its list, for example, and we were able to move it to the "Family" tab to monitor its activity. But the activity indicator was always at "idle." Box was not seeing its activity while it was in use—which was strange, as we weren't browsing HTTPS or other encrypted sites. The Nexus 5 phone and the Windows 7 laptop, however, came up as active when we were using them. We believe this is a problem with specific devices not receiving new DHCP settings after the Box was connected to the network.
Not a Solo Act
Bitdefender told us that although the Box can function as a stand-alone router, its real strength is augmenting an existing Wi-Fi network. That way, you keep your router, and you won't have to update the password information for all of your associated devices. When we tested the Box as a standalone router, we quickly discovered it also just wasn't powerful enough to cut the mustard.
Box supports 802.11b/g/n. That means that in standalone mode, Wi-Fi performance won't be nearly as good than if you were using a 802.11ac router. In our testing, both Netgear routers we used supported 802.11ac as both Netgear routers we used were. In the standalone test using the jperf utility, Box averaged 93Mbps at about 1 foot, 70Mbps at 10 feet, and down to 64Mbps by the time we got to 15 feet. The Box couldn't maintain the signal long enough to even try testing at 20 feet.
In practical terms, this means moving further from the Box severely degrades your network performance. Ten feet with direct-line-of-sight seems to be ideal, so using the Box as a stand-alone router really makes no sense.
We measured Internet performance using SpeedTest.net. With the regular Netgear router on its own, we saw Internet download speeds of 2.89Mbps and uploads of 0.41Mbps. Switching to the Box dipped that figure only slightly, to 2.86Mbps download and 0.38Mbps uploads. Most people won't notice a difference, especially if they are on faster broadband connections. When we paired Box with the Netgear Nighthawk (R7000) router, in the recommended configuration, we saw Internet download speeds of 2.87Mbps and upload speeds of 0.40Mbps. Clearly, the Box doesn't impact Web browsing.
Beyond Your Home
Box's Private Line feature extends malware protection to Mac, Windows, and iOS devices that are currently out of range of your protected Wi-Fi network. Once enabled, your traffic is routed through and protected by the Box no matter where the device is or how it's connected to the Internet (be it Wi-Fi or cellular). It's your very own VPN service.
The feature worked as expected in testing, as we continued to see alerts about potential malicious activity on our tablet even when we were outside and connected to a cellular network. This can be quite handy if you happen to open up a malicious email while out and about, as Box will be able to step in and block the URL.
We were worried that Private Line would slow down Web performance since it routes device's connection back to where the Box is located, and then out to the Internet. While there was a performance hit, it wasn't as bad as expected, with Internet download speeds of 2.5Mbps and upload speeds of 0.35Mbps. However, we did notice screen fragments when using desktop sharing tools such as WebEx and VNC.
Out of the Box
We used the Box for months and on many networks, learning its ins and outs. Throughout our testing, we had a hard time seeing what devices were on our network, and trying to manage them in real time. The app, while simple, is sometimes too simple and didn't always give us the insight or tools we needed. We also had trouble resetting the Box for new networks—something the average user probably not have to do often.
But we also found the Box to be remarkably powerful. Just by plugging in the Box to our network, we had the protection of an entire antivirus suite, at a lower cost and without the effort of installing software on every device. Its Private Line feature offers the protection of a VPN, but the assurance of your own trusted network. And it can't be understated that the Box solves the problem of having dozens of Internet connected devices that can't be secured through traditional means.
Bitdefender has entered new territory with the Box, and it's a great first start. We're confident that Bitdefender will improve setup and management. It's the first device of its kind, and we hope it won't be the last.
A paradigm shift for the consumer security industry, Bitdefender Box is a piece of hardware that protects every computer, phone, tablet, and smart device on your network. It does a surprisingly good job, considering it's the first device of its kind.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for SecurityWatch newsletter for our top privacy and security stories delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
