OCTOBER 2020 PCWorld 59NordVPN recently pulling in a resounding
victory: NordVPN kept 60.40 percent of the
base speed across five different country
locations, while Mullvad retained 52 percent.
Winner: NordVPNPRIVACY AND ANONYMITY
Both Mullvad and NordVPN are big on not
tracking you. NordVPN says it doesn’t log any
of your activity, though it does maintain a
timestamp of your last session status, which is
deleted within 15 minutes of you terminating
a connection. Mullvad also has a no-logs
policy and says all data is sent to dev/null, a
nonexistent directory on Linux machines.
When it comes to protecting your identity,
Mullvad really excels. NordVPN only requires
an email, which is already pretty good, and
you can easily use a throwaway address tonrvp)—the former is our current top pick for a
VPN (go.pcworld.com/vpnr)—to understand
how they differ and figure out which one is
right for you.
THE WINDOWS APP
The primary way we interact with a VPN is
through its desktop app. A bad app may not
be a deal breaker, but something that’s easy
to use just makes things simpler.
NordVPN on Windows uses an interactive
map to help you connect to the location you
want. This can be a little overwhelming from
the zoomed-out view (especially if you’re
looking at Europe), but zoom in and
everything becomes clearer. NordVPN also
provides a list view of locations, as well as the
ability to drill down into specific servers.
Mullvad offers a single-pane app with a
non-interactive map. It’s a
vast improvement on what
the company had before,
but it doesn’t quite rise to
the level of NordVPN’s
excellent mix of simplicity
and power-user complexity.
Winner: NordVPN
SPEED
A VPN is useless if your
internet connection slows to
a crawl. In our tests, both
VPNs busted out high-speed
performances, with NordVPN’s default view.