Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking Proton VPN keeps things simple with competitive pricing and a service that plays nice with everything you can throw at it. If you’re in the market for a VPN, Proton VPN should be included in your comparisons. If you don’t mind paying upfront, Proton VPN costs US$71.88 for the first year (US$5.99 per month) or US$119.76 for a two-year subscription (US$4.99 per month). That pricing has noticeably gone down for annual and biennial options since I first checked in with Proton VPN earlier in 2022. There’s a server and feature-limited free version if you want to try before you buy, but I’d advise paying for Proton VPN and taking advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee instead. Proton VPN’s annual pricing is in the middle of the 15 VPN services we’ve reviewed, while the biennial pricing isn’t as impressive as alternatives from CyberGhost VPN, Surfshark VPN, PureVPN and TunnelBear. For starters, by default Proton VPN configures itself to automatically start with Windows and boot on connection. Connecting automatically isn’t much of an issue, but another program automatically starting with Windows may lead to confusion if you don’t realise you’re connected to a VPN. Admittedly, Proton VPN works well in the background and didn’t negatively impact any of the software I run every day. There was even an instance when I inadvertently left it on while gaming—testament to how well it works invisibly in the background—but I was having some latency issues in that game, so Proton VPN may not be the gaming VPN you’re looking for if that’s important. The other Windows issue I encountered was Proton VPN inexplicably has a smaller window that opens when you’re restoring it from the taskbar. Clicking on the ‘ProtonVPN’ text maximises the program again, but it’s an extra unnecessary click, particularly given your right-click taskbar options are only to disconnect and exit. Outside of these Windows gripes, I like the extra information in the user interface, including session data downloaded and current download/upload speeds. Admittedly, it’s not as clean a look as other VPN interfaces and it may intimidate some. Still, server load is a nice touch, and it’s easy to find a replacement server if your current one is heavily populated. That said, I wish Proton VPN was more consistent with location as well as country information on its servers so you can easily tell which part of a country you’re connected to. At the time of writing this review, Proton VPN had 1,745 servers in 64 countries across 89 locations. That server count is on the low side, but the country and location counts are decent compared to Proton VPN’s peers. Proton VPN can be used with the following devices:
Android iOS Windows MacOS Linux Chromebook Android TV Fire Stick TV
Outside of these primary platforms, Proton VPN can also be installed on a compatible router. Additionally, Proton VPN provides OpenVPN configuration files for third-party VPN applications, including the ability to personalise which locations are downloaded as part of a config file. These options are great nice-to-haves for advanced users. Outside of this, the other libraries were incredibly fast to load with playback starting in a few seconds. The thing to note is that services like HBO Max and Stan like to get users into the content sooner and improves the quality after playback has commenced. If this happens to you, it’s best to pause the stream and wait a few seconds before resuming for better quality. The table below uses the 29% and 36% best-case download percentage speed-change results (from my tests) when connecting to a US server and UK server, respectively, with Proton VPN. These percentage changes are applied to the max-speed average typical evening download speeds (TEDS) from the NBN providers we track in our comparison engine, across available speed tiers. The three columns on the right of the table show how many simultaneous streams (if any) can be feasibly watched when using a VPN with popular US 4K streaming services: Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max. There’s also an extra column for BBC iPlayer, which is based in the UK. Note that Hulu and BBC iPlayer technically have options for viewing on unlimited screens. While it’s not practical to stream to a dozen or so screens, it is indicative of how well specific NBN plans hold up with VPN speed changes. In terms of app extras, there are a few neat inclusions. There are single-tap options for features like Secure Core, which is a multi-hop VPN server option for those who don’t mind sacrificing speed for extra security. NetShield is configurable to block just malware, or malware, ads and trackers. There’s a kill switch, too, which lets you choose between user-friendly and hardcore modes. The former option kills your internet connection if a Proton VPN server unexpectedly loses connection, while the latter means Proton VPN has to be running to even use the internet. Finally, there’s a port-forwarding option for those who want faster gaming and torrenting. Conveniently, all of these user-interface options link to information pages if you’d like to dig into more details of how they can help you. Digging into the settings you’ll also find split tunnelling (select which services aren’t covered by the VPN) and protocol selection, which is on ‘smart’ by default but you can choose between WireGuard or the TCP/UDP versions of OpenVPN.
