66 PCWorld JANUARY 2022REVIEWS BEST VPN SERVICES
Finally, how many devices does a VPN
support from a single account? In this age of
smartphones, tablets, laptops, and PCs, a
VPN’s cost should include licensing for at
least five devices. Also, a provider should
have Android and iOS apps to make it easy to
connect a smartphone or tablet to the service.HOW WE TESTED
We judge VPNs on a variety of criteria
including overall connection speeds, privacy
protection, usability of the interface, country
choices, server count, and cost.
Speed tests are kept as simple as
possible. We connect to five different
global locations for a given VPN—typically
North America, Europe, the U.K., Australia,
and a wild card somewhere in Asia—on
three different days at different times of theday. We run the test at each location
multiple times.
Before the test begins, we check the
speed of our base Wi-Fi connection using an
online speed test. Then we connect to the
VPN’s servers around the world and run the
speed test again. We then show each result,
average them out, and calculate the average
as a percentage of the base speed.
Remember that internet speeds can vary
wildly based on location, routers, PCs, time of
day, connection type, the load on the VPN
and speed test servers, and numerous other
factors. In other words, our test results will
likely differ from yours. For that reason,
consider our speed results only as a rough
guide for how each VPN performs.
Judging server choices by country is also
kept simple. We expect a VPN to offer a
variety of country connections with a
minimum of at least 20.
Privacy and anonymity is judged
on the guarantees the companies
make, as well as its reputation from
any news items we’re aware of that
may impact the trustworthiness of
these claims. We also take a look at
the data encryption, authentication,
and handshake protocols used.
Finally, for pricing we expect to
pay $60 per year, and anything over
that needs to justify its cost with
extra features or unique selling
ExpressVPN’s built-in speed test. points of some kind.