The most effective approach to improve your online security, bypass over Geo-restrictions, and prevent data hacking efforts is using a VPN service but can you trust just any of the industry’s hundreds of providers? While some VPNs provide an overall fantastic service, some do not. In order to give our users the finest and most unbiased reviews possible, we daily test a large number of VPNs in-depth.
We test these VPNs according to a set of criteria and standards, including security, performance, and IP/DNS leaks etc. This method has been carefully selected to only show you the most reputable VPN providers. If you’re wondering why you should trust our VPN reviews, read this article where we fully outline all of the procedures we use to evaluate new and existing VPN services on a daily basis in order to keep our users notified.
Why You Should Trust Our VPN Reviews
Our main objective is to offer our readers truthful; unbiased, and reliable data so they can make intelligent choices about VPN services. We distinguish ourselves from other review websites with our comprehensive testing and evaluation procedure, which makes sure that our suggestions are supported by in-depth study and practical expertise. Here are some arguments in favor of your confidence in our VPN reviews.
- Test Strategy: A VPN service is put through an exhaustive and transparent testing process in which every vital aspect is taken into account. It consists of performance tests, security and privacy assessments, customer care behaviors, and price-to-feature comparisons. Our reviews are thorough and reliable because we pay close attention to the minor details and are committed to accuracy.
- Field Tests: To ensure that our reviews are grounded in actual experience rather than theoretical analysis, we test every VPN service across a range of devices and operating systems to adopt real-world usage scenarios.
- Unbiased Writing: We aim to provide accurate details in our reviews, which are neutral and unbiased due to the fact that we have no connections to any VPN service providers. A freedom to write unbiased reviews.
- Always Fresh: We make an effort to provide our readers with the most recent information regarding VPNs whenever their costs, policies, or features are revised. This allows our readers to make an accurate decision based upon the most recent data about a VPN service, so they are never in a loss.
- Subject Matter Experts: Our team of professionals has extensive experience and they are experts in their subjects like networking, online gaming, and cybersecurity. Because of this, we can provide incisive, trustworthy reviews that assist our readers in selecting the finest VPN services.
To give you an insight of our transparent and exhaustive test strategy that makes the basis of our reviews, we have illustrated the involved steps in the figure below.
By putting your trust in our VPN reviews, you can comfortably select a VPN service that has undergone extensive testing and evaluation by our team of professionals, providing a seamless browsing, gaming or streaming experience with excellent protection and privacy without damaging your pocket.
1. Filtering Out Only Top VPNs
Our testing process begins with thorough research and selection of VPN services that are popular, reputable, and known for their performance in the gaming community. We gather information from various sources, including user reviews, forums, and expert opinions. We then shortlist the most promising VPN services to be included in our testing process.
| Resources | Checkpoints |
|---|---|
| Google.com, VPN Forums, User-experiences, IT Professionals | Popularity amongst IT professionals and VPN forums, reliable payment methods, independent certifications |
2. Field Setup
We install and set up every VPN on various devices and operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, to ensure that our reviews are based on real-world experiences. By conducting this field-test, we examine the ease of installation, configuring VPN connection of different devices and check compatibility with different streaming platforms and P2P client software like torrents. We also assess how easy it is to uninstall the VPN and revert network configuration back to normal on any of the above listed devices and platforms.
| Resources | Checkpoints |
|---|---|
| VPN Application for different devices and platforms | Easy setup, wide compatibility with different apps and websites, cleaning-up procedure. |
3. User-Friendly Application
In this section of the test, we respond to a lot of concerns. Included in this is the extent to which the specific VPN is user-friendly, clutter-free, and has apps that are optimized for the relevant platforms. We test user interfaces across all platforms, with a focus on PCs and mobile devices due to the widespread use of VPNs on these devices. Before recommending any VPN to our readers, we thoroughly test all the crucial UI elements, including the kill switch location, the server selection and protocol menu’s organization, the smart server selection, and many other features. Additionally, for our advanced users, we perform UI tests on streaming players, gaming consoles, and routers as well.
| Tools & Software | What we look |
|---|---|
| VPN Provider’s App | Tailored UI for platform, location of crucial buttons and options, server selection menu, navigation on streaming players and gaming consoles. |
4. Performance Tests
As your streaming, browsing, and gaming experiences are directly impacted by the performance of a VPN, it is essential to test every aspect that affects the performance of a VPN, which is a critical part of our review process. We do a number of tests to evaluate how the VPN affects the performance which is a combination of connection speeds, latency, and general stability. The detailed procedure and tools used for each test are described below.
| Tools & Software | What we look |
|---|---|
| Ookla’s Speedtest.net, Netflix’s Fast.com, Infamous tools | Download speed, upload speed, ping results, jitters, baseline speed comparison |
Speed Tests
Using industry-standard tools and specially developed testing software, we evaluate the download and upload speeds of each VPN service on both regional and international servers. We employ a variety of tools, such as:
- Ookla’s Speedtest.net: Speedtest.net is a platform developed by Ookla which is used to benchmark internet connection speeds in almost all around the world. It offers selection of different server locations for speed test and provides results that includes download and upload speeds, ping and jitter response to the specified server. The Speedtest App is also available on different platforms including Android and iOS.
- Netflix’s Fast.com: Similar to Speedtest.net, it is a minimal speed testing website that is developed by Netflix to instantly test the internet connection speed to evaluate the streaming capabilities. We use this service to verify the results that have been provided by the Ookla as some ISPs host their own servers on Ookla, which may provide inaccurate results.
- Others: We also use various infamous tools to test the VPN connection speeds to make sure that the results are unbiased and not sponsored by any specific VPN provider.
We perform repeated tests for every VPN service, on many servers, throughout the day, to account for variations in network congestion and server load. The effect of the VPN on connection speeds is then evaluated by contrasting the findings with our baseline measurements made before a VPN connection.
Availability of Server Locations
To determine each VPN service’s capacity to bypass Geo-restrictions and deliver the best performance, we investigate the number of server locations and its total spread. To evaluate this, we use different online tools such as:
- Field-test: The most accurate method for ensuring location of servers is to see it ourselves by installing the app and subscribing to the service. Once we connect to a specific server, we visit different websites such as Google, YouTube to ensure that they redirect to the regional page as per the selected server’s location.
- In-app tools: Many VPN service providers have capabilities for automatically choosing servers built into their software that show server load, ping times, and geographical data. We make use of this performance data to verify the provider’s claim along with the 3rd party tools as mentioned below.
- IP location checkers: We also use several third-party tools, such as IP2Location and MaxMind in order to verify the VPN servers’ locations and ensure that the VPN provider is appropriately representing them.
Latency and Connection Stability
This test might not be important for basic users who only wish to protect their privacy while using a VPN, but for streamers and gamers, this is a highly important test to ensure that the connection is stable with minimum latency. Latency is a measure of performance for online gaming which ensures that all the gamers connected to the single server experience the same screen at any instant of gaming experience. To test this, we make use of both field test and 3rd party tools to give our reader most accurate reviews with following methods.
- Measurements during game play: Our team of pro gamers tests this by participating in tournaments on all the most well-known online games, including PUBG, Fortnite, COD, Roblox and Minecraft, as well as by measuring in-game latency and assessing real-world gaming performance when connected to a VPN server.
- 3rd party test tools: By measuring the round-trip time for data packets between our device and the VPN server, we gain an understanding of the VPN’s possible effects on gaming performance with the tools like Pingplotter, Path Analyzer Pro, GPing, etc.
We use both specialized software and open-source tools like Wireshark to continuously monitor the VPN connections in order to evaluate connection stability. This makes it simpler in the detection of any disconnections, packet losses, or other problems that can have an adverse effect on the gaming experience.
5. Security and Privacy Tests
| Tools & Software | What we look |
|---|---|
| IPLeak.net, DNSLeakTest.com, BrowserLeaks.com, Provider’s literature review, third-party audits | Encryption & protocols, privacy policy, logging practices, DNS & IP leak tests, kill switch |
Our review process places a high focus on a VPN’s ability to offer strong security and privacy. To ensure that each VPN service upholds the greatest standards for safeguarding your online activity and personal information, we carefully review each one. Here is a thorough breakdown of the tests we run and the tools and software we use for our security and privacy assessment:
Encryption Methods and Protocols
To make sure each service offers strong security and data protection, we examine the encryption methods and VPN protocols offered by each one. We examine this by:
- Provider’s Literature: To learn more about the specifics of the encryption and protocol implementation, we read the technical documentation, whitepapers, and blog posts of the VPN provider.
- Third-party Security Audits: To verify the Provider’s claim in their documentation, we also looks for the reports provided by the independent 3rd party security and privacy auditors like PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which provides unbiased results and give transparent and comprehensive information about the security and privacy features of a VPN service.
Privacy Policy and Logging Practices
To make sure our recommended VPN service upholds a rigorous no-logs policy and respects customer privacy, we carefully examine each VPN provider’s privacy policy and logging practices. Our evaluation procedure entails:
- In-depth analysis of Privacy terms: We thoroughly review each VPN provider’s privacy policies to look for any shortcomings or loopholes that can jeopardise user privacy.
- Strict No-log Policy Verification: We check the provider’s logging practices against outside data from Cyber news, forums, customer ratings, and expert views. We also search for previous scandals or incidences that might cast doubt on the provider’s privacy policies.
Leak Tests
To verify that the VPN successfully hides users’ online activity and identities, we do DNS and IP leak tests. The tools/websites we employ for this are as follows:
- IPLeak.net: We use this website to detect IPv4 and IPv6 leaks, DNS leaks and WebRTC leaks. This test ensures that your IP address and associated location is not exposed to the internet while connected to a VPN Server.
- DNSLeakTest.com: This is another useful tool in our library which we use to counter check the results provided by the IPLeak.net. In addition to that, it is also able to detect the DNS leak that can lead to exposing your browsing history to the third-party tracking websites which will use this information to show you intrusive advertisements.
- BrowserLeaks.com: Despite relying on a VPN, WebRTC leaks might still reveal your IP address, so we use this tool to check for these leaks. Additionally, we check whether the VPN has built-in WebRTC leak protection or offers detailed instructions for turning off WebRTC in your browser.
Kill-switch and other security features
We assess the efficacy of the kill switch on the VPN as well as any further advanced security features like split tunnelling, double VPN, and obfuscated servers. Our evaluation includes:
- Effectiveness of Kill Switch: To evaluate the VPN’s kill switch operation and make sure it efficiently blocks internet access and stops data leaks when VPN connection is lost, we simulate unexpected connection dropouts to replicate the real-world scenario.
- Advance Security features: Each advanced security measure undergoes a thorough testing process in order to confirm its efficacy and usability. This enables us to analyze whether these additional features offer users more value and security or are just available for marketing purposes.
These technologies and techniques allow us to thoroughly evaluate the security and privacy features of each VPN service. In order to assist you in selecting a VPN that protects your online activity and preserves your personal information, we strive to give you accurate and trustworthy information.
6. Streaming Capabilities
It’s easy to test a VPN for streaming. All we have to do is to select a preferred streaming provider, for instance Netflix and connect to a VPN server in a different region. Once the connection is established, we designate our movie lovers to watch their favorite movie in 4K HDR resolution and in addition to indulge in the exciting screenplay, we ask them to inform us about any lag or buffering faced during the entire show. In the background, we make a log of connection speed, data consumed and any degradation of the video quality during the screenplay. The results of this test and log of data, sets the basis for recommending the best streaming VPN to our readers. This test also ensures that the selected VPN is able to unblock most of the popular streaming services. This includes but not limited to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu, Disney+, BBC iPlayer and many others. Lastly, for the devices which don’t support native installation of the VPN app like Roku, Apple TV and gaming consoles, we use VPN’s SmartDNS feature to check its performance and compatibility.
| Tools and Software | What we look |
|---|---|
| VPN Provider’s App, SmartDNS, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, etc. | Unblocking capability, Streaming quality, lag-free experience, Ease of Smart DNS feature. |
7. Customer Support
We also take into account each VPN provider’s knowledge base and customer service to give a comprehensive review. We use a variety of channels, including live chat, ticket system, email, and forums, to determine how timely and useful the support teams are. Additionally, in order to assist the introvert who prefers not to contact customer service, we evaluate the completeness of the knowledge base that is available on the website.
| Customer Support | Tools & Software |
|---|---|
| VPN provider’s app and website (Live chat, ticket system, email and forums) | Completeness of knowledge base, prompt and effective response, availability of live chat, knowledge of CSRs. |
8. Value for Money
We put the pricing of the VPN service as the last factor to think about while evaluating a VPN. Although there is no testing for this factor, we consider whether the VPN we are suggesting to our readers is the best value for them or not – in other words, if it’s a bit pricey, is the service worth the money?
To make this decision, we evaluate the VPN’s value for money by comparing price plans, available payment methods, and refund policies. We also need to verify whether the VPN has a free trial and a refund policy. This is due to the fact that free trials are a great method to test out a VPN before deciding to sign up for a full-fledged long-term service.
Once all the checks are ticked, we consider the subject VPN to include it in the list of recommendations prepared for different users as per various usage.
| Tools & Software | What we look |
|---|---|
| The VPN Provider’s Website | Pricing plans, discounts, free-trial, money-back guarantee, payment options |
We put the pricing of the VPN service as the last factor to think about while evaluating a VPN. Although there is no testing for this factor, we consider whether the VPN we are suggesting to our readers is the best value for them or not – in other words, if it’s a bit pricey, is the service worth the money?
To make this decision, we evaluate the VPN’s value for money by comparing price plans, available payment methods, and refund policies. We also need to verify whether the VPN has a free trial and a refund policy. This is due to the fact that free trials are a great method to test out a VPN before deciding to sign up for a full-fledged long-term service.
Once all the checks are ticked, we consider the subject VPN to include it in the list of recommendations prepared for different users as per various usage.
Additional Features for Advanced Users
The additional capabilities that a VPN provides and are important to the majority of advanced users are examined in more detail. For the majority of expert users, capabilities like obfuscation technologies, kill switches, and port forwarding are important and good to have to give them value for money. We strive our best to review these features as well in our special publications dedicated for advanced users.
Conclusion
We take pleasure in our dedication to provide our readers reliable and accurate VPN recommendations. You can make rational choices and take advantage of a flawless streaming, browsing or gaming experience with the maximum security and privacy with the efforts that we have put in our thorough testing procedure, which ensures that we cover all essential components of a VPN service. You can be confident that if you choose a VPN service based on our suggestions, it has been carefully examined by our team of professionals and gives you a collateral against your money spent.