Their detection rates have been pretty low lately. http://www.av-test.org/en/ I've been using Bitdefender at home. It's kinda annoying but seems to work fine.
As someone who works in the information security space, I've seen this touted over and over again, and repeated as nauseum in the media. However, the only place I see these terrible results is reports from AV Test specifically. And it bothers me, because I can't see why they would rate it a flat zero, when it certainly did not score a zero in their testing.
It feels to me like AV Test is being dishonest with their scoring. I don't know if they have any stake in who buys what product and I certainly don't want to claim they are biased since I have no proof of that, but the way MSE/Defender has been vilified in the media following the results from AV Test, I do have to say rating the product as a zero when it did not score zero feels incredibly dishonest to me.
Zero should be the security you have with no AV, and MSE rates 75%-80% in their testing.
It doesn't get a zero exactly, it says it's a "baseline". Sorry if I linked to a questionable source, but it's not the only place I've heard this from. AV Comparatives does the same (PDF) http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/av... Under the chart on page 3, it notes that MSE scored 80% (which is lower than the others) but it's not "competitive".
For Protection Score, it's rated 0.0/6.0. For something that's 80% accurate, included with every computer by default (and turned on by default) and constantly updated, it's being done a massive disservice. Yeah there are better free AVs out there, but given the choice between nothing and MSE/Defender, I'd really rather everyone use MSE. There's a long way between 80% and 100%, but an even longer way between 80% and 0%. Especially when the AV is no longer even the most important part of PC security. That starts at the browser (every browser) and continues into UAC (on every OS) and things like SmartScreen verifying the reputation of executables (not just scanning for malware).
I wasn't meaning to call you out on your source, just the message that this test seems to give off ("MSE is worse than nothing").
