ISSUE 381|COMPUTER SHOPPER|NOVEMBER 2019 47
THEREAREMANYvalid reasons to use a
VPN; you might be accessing or inputting
sensitive data that you don’t want tracked,
when online banking, forinstance,oryou may
wish to use the internet unencumbered when
visiting acountry that censors it. Sometimes,
you might just want to watch ageo-blocked
video streaming service,and that’s fine too.
CyberGhost is acompleteVPN package,
but it has an interesting focus on unblocking
video.The interface includes aFor Streaming
tab,where you’ll find alist of country names
and streaming services, which you can simply
click on to unblock. Alternatively,you can
search foraspecific service to see alist of
server locations through which you can
access it. Supported services include Netflix,
BBC iPlayer,USAmazon Prime and US Fox, as
well as Netflix France,Globo in Brazil, CBC
Canada and UK Eurosport.
HIDDENTALENTS
It’s all very easy to get going. Opening
CyberGhost VPN instantly connects you to
the fastest secure server available,with no
waiting around foraconnection like some
VPNs. To choose aserver yourself,it’s simply
acase of opening the All servers tab and
picking one from ahuge list.
CyberGhost itself is located in Romania,
which isn’t part of the Five Eyes intelligence
alliance,soit’s not mandated to keep any user
logs. According to the service’s strict privacy
policy,all that is stored is your email address,
payment information and cookie preferences,
and user traffic is protected using the same
AES 256-bit encryption that secret services
use to protect classified information.
CYBERGHOSTVPN
★★★★★
From £2.10 per month•
From http://www.cyberghostvpn.com
VERDICT
CyberGhostVPNdoesafinejobof
unblockingover30streamingservices
while safeguardingyourprivacy
VPN SOFTWARE
Performance is pretty good. Using Ookla’s
Speedtest.net tool to measure connection
speeds, we found that connecting to aBritish
server over adomestic 60Mbit/s connection
in London had aperformance impact of
around 20%. That means CyberGhost isn’t as
fast as super-speedy VPNs such as SurfShark
or IPVanish, but it’s still barely noticeable if
you have afast internet connection.
Connecting via France and Belgium,
CyberGhostwasevenmoreonaparwithother
VPNs, with aperformance drop of 25-30%.
Forlonger-distance connections, CyberGhost
was even faster than the competition: the US
East coast server gave us a40% drop in
speed, while we lost 65% when connected to
an Australian server.Ofall the VPNs we’ve
tested, only ExpressVPN (Shopper347)gave
us afaster connection to the US and Australia.READYAND STABLE
Performance isn’t flawless: occasionally
connections took longer than expected, or we
were diverted to adifferent server,but these
are quirks you can expect with any VPN. Once
aconnection was established, it remained
stable and never dropped; besides taking a
fewattempts to start, we could watch an HD
film via the US server without interruption.
In addition to the desktop app,you can
also get Android and iOS versions formobile
devices. These look and function almost
identically: upon opening the app,you’re
greeted by the same instant-connection slider
as on the Windows version; tapping the
Connect to menu at the bottom of the slider
takes you to ascreen with three tabs, labelled
All, Streaming and
Favourites. These
work largely the same
as their Windows
counterparts; the
only difference we
noticed is that here
you can only search
by country name,and
not foraparticular
streaming service.
The Android
and iOS apps also
have settings to
automatically engage
the VPN when you
connect to specificand open Wi-Fi networks. Functionally,the
biggest difference is that the Android
version includes the option to block ads and
malicious websites, enable data compression
and prevent online tracking, while those
capabilities aren’t possible in iOS. The Android
version also connects over the OpenVPN
protocol, while iOS uses IKEv2.
The other difference is performance.We
found the Android version performed similarly
to the PC version, but iOS speeds were much
faster.Weonly lost 5% of our download
speed when connected to alocal server,10%
when geo-shifting to Paris and just 15% when
we selected New York. The iOS app also let us
watch US Netflix right away, whereas Android
initially detected we were using aproxy: we
had to clear the Netflix cache and reinstall the
app to rectify the problem.
CyberGhost positions itself as apremium
VPN service,and its price plans aren’t the
cheapest around –certainly not the monthly
plan, which starts at £10.29 per month.
The yearly plan is much better value at
£55.08 per year,equivalent to £4.59 per
month. The very best deal is the three-year
plan, which works out to £2.10 per month.
As well as major credit cards, CyberGhost
accepts payment via PayPal and bitcoin.
The free trial period is only 24 hours, but
CyberGhost does offer a45-daymoney-back
guarantee,which is longer than most VPN
services offer.Unlike other VPNs, CyberGhost
also refunds bitcoin payments.PHANTOMGAIN
Only afew years ago,CyberGhost VPN was a
decent alternative to the likes of ExpressVPN
and NordVPN (Shopper367), but it never truly
stood out. In 2019,however,it’s become one
of the very best VPN services around: the
streaming features are great, privacy
protections are top-notch and performance
stays relatively high even when connecting
to servers on the other side of the world.
We recommend trying it –with the 45-day
guarantee,you’ve got nothing to lose.
SherwinCoelhoSPECIFICATIONS
OSSUPPORTWindows,macOS,Linux,Android,iOS•
DETAILSwww.cyberghostvpn.com•PRODUCTCODE
⬆CyberGhost VPN allows you to connect to servers right across the world, and CyberGhostVPN
tells you exactly what sort of performance you’ll get with each one
⬆CyberGhost is easy to set up,but more advanced settings are available if you need them