Apple Appstore Trend Micro antivirus "Dr Antivirus" is so much better than regular version why!?

hopefully a Trend Micro representative/engineer will respond.  Just looking at the scanning speed is light speeds ahead of the regular Mac antivirus edition..... why pay more for less...

Welcome to the community TM Mac User!

Thanks for your feedback and good observation. 

Dr. Antivirus is a new program for Mac users and while Dr. Antivirus' main feature seems similar to Antivirus For Mac, the latter offers advanced protection such as:

Ransomware Protection with Folder Shield
Email protection that safeguards against scams
Automatic updates and Website filter. 

Antivirus For Mac also automatically protects other browsers (Chrome and Firefox) with its Toolbar while on Dr. Antivirus it needs to be manually enabled in Safari for Web Threat Protection. 

In addition, Antivirus for Mac comes with your Trend Micro Maximum / Premium Security suite so you don't have to purchase a separate license.  

Is there a plan to merge the two? By the way the Safari plugin for the regular version is broken on High Sierra latest 10.13.4 whereas the Dr Antivirus plugin works normal. Both editions need the user to manually enable the plug in it is not automatic...

Sorry if the previous statement wasn't clear. For Dr. Antivirus the toolbar in Safari needs to be enabled for the Web Threat Protection to work while on Antivirus For Mac it is not needed since this feature is already integrated within the program, the purpose of the toolbar is for Privacy Scan.

The toolbar for Mac in High Sierra not working is a possible bug with Safari or Mac OS (Apple has acknowledged this, but no fix for now), but we can isolate it further, we can proceed with troubleshooting.
It might possibly be merged in the future.   

Thanks for the clarification! If you could do something about the time needed to do the smart scan on the regular version would be excellent. It is literally like 1hr vs 5 min when you test it.

Thank you as well, 

Smart scan normally takes time during its first scan and if it needs to scan large number of files.