How We TestedThe Tester

My name is Holly Aguirre. I have years of experience torture-testing hardware peripherals at the PC Magazine labs, as well as all things home office, including cyber security. As of late, Ive been covering the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein saga for Vanity Fair and Lifetime Networks, and consequently found myself in need of a reliable VPN. One good hacking will do that to you.

A good VPN has a number of elements, some of which we considered essential and some we considered as nice-to-haves. Data security is, of course, the chief priority. Its also the most difficult to verify in any absolute sense. While we established some minimum requirements for consideration to our list256-bit encryption, kill switches, and compatability with Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS, and Linuxtheres no getting around the fact that your data has to pass through servers somewhere in the world that you dont have control over. Theres a certain amount of trust involved.

We, therefore, looked for VPN services that are based in countries with strong privacy laws, that make commitments to transparency, and that allow 3rd-party audits to verify their security.

Secondly, we considered the various use cases for a VPN and created tests to evaluate them. VPNs with more features, like geo blocking and more servers went to the head of the class, even if they were more expensive.

Speed was another vital ingredient in a good VPN. Faster connections prove valuable for gaming, torrenting, streaming and much more. We used download, upload, and ping times to gauge speed, but with the full understanding that any number of other factors, such as location, time of day, and network capacity, can impact the speed in your home. For a better understanding of other people's experiences with the VPNs we tested, we looked to reviews from sites such as PCMag, Toms Guide, and CNet.

Finally, we took a hard look at customer service, payment options, cancellation policy, the number of devices allowed per account, ease of use, the number and location of servers, and other factors.

Each VPN was installed and tested on five or more devices: a blend of Windows and Mac OS, including laptops, iPads, and smartphones.

VPNs, while simple to use, can be fairly technical to explain. Here's some useful terminology:

In addition to safe surfing, there are myriad reasons to use a VPN. Due to the global pandemic, telecommuting is a new reality for many office workers, and earlier this year IT departments were left scrambling to provide workers remote security solutions they once controlled in-house. Any one of the VPNs featured here is an easy fix to some of the more common data privacy issues. And in turn, a personal VPN can hide your online activity from your boss.

Additionally, you might use a VPN to stream geo-blocked content or improve online speeds.

Credit: Reviewed / Jackson Ruckar

Our winner, ExpressVPN, won us over with its ease of use, reliability, and commitment to privacy.

Netflix and BBC iPlayer are just two streaming services in which your global location determines the content that you can see. Since a VPN spoofs your location, the right one can also unlock a whole new world of shows and news.

Perhaps youve settled in for movie night only to have Jason Bateman freeze in mid-sentence over and over. This may be happening because your ISP is allowed to throttle your connection speed whenever it likes, probably when everyone else is getting comfy, too. Connecting to a server via a VPN in a different time zone may increase your home internet speeds for content viewing and gaming alike.

Lastly, your web surfing habits, ad clicking and/or purchasing history could make you the victim of price gouging. Some shopping sites charge based on geographic location, perhaps to offset free shipping. Utilizing a good VPNwhile it takes more timecould potentially save you a lot of money on travel and other goods and services.

While there are free VPN options from a handful of reputable companies, this is one category where a little money goes a long way. The free options tend to be very slow or severely limited in the number of options they offer. And as youre not a paying customer, youre also subject to the very ads that youre trying to avoid being tracked by. The one exception here is TunnelBear, which offers a free and robustly-featured version of its VPN capped at 500MB per month.

We use standardized and scientific testing methods to scrutinize every product and provide you with objectively accurate results. If youve found different results in your own research, email us and well compare notes. If it looks substantial, well gladly re-test a product to try and reproduce these results. After all, peer reviews are a critical part of any scientific process.

Read more here:

The Best VPNs of 2020 - Reviewed