SurfEasy review: Fast speeds, unjustifiable price tag - leehaile1944

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Instant speeds
• Works with U.S. Netflix

Cons

• No easy way to fund anonymously
• The concealment policy may consecrate some users pause
• Poor desktop app
• Not-message pricing is not competitive

Our Verdict

SurfEasy is a very basic VPN with fast speeds that fire get past Netflix's VPN restrictions. The company's Windows app is in bad want of an upgrade, it's overpriced after the early year, and there's no easy path to pay anonymously for those who need it.

SurfEasy in brief:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Business location: Tempe, AZ
• Identification number of servers: 2,000+
• Number of country locations: 31
• Cost: $29.88 for the first year, $47.88 or $77.88 after that

What a strange few eld it's been for SurfEasy. Most people had never heard of the service until information technology was snapped up in early 2015 away browser maker Opera house, and for a time it powered Opera's free VPN. Then in 2017 NortonLifeLock, when it was ease called Symantec, snapped it up from Opera house.

In whol that time and with different owners, SurfEasy has barely denatured. That's not necessarily a respectable matter as the user interface is rather antiquated now, and at multiplication the app hindquarters Be a little infuriating with dropped connections. Still, it's speedy decent to rest indefinite of the 10 fastest VPNs in our tests.

Short letter: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for inside information about competing products and how we tested them.

SurfEasy with an active VPN link.

When disconnected, SurfEasy shows your location based happening your IP address; when connected it shows your apparent location supported your VPN IP.

To change your VPN location flick the flag icon in the upper-right corner. This reveals a list of every the various country locations you can prefer from.

There International Relations and Security Network't a lot in terms of extra features. No double-hops VPNs or split tunneling. SurfEasy does, still, work with U.S. Netflix. That was a big deal four years ago, but now IT's becoming a more plebeian feature along VPN services.

SurfEasy also blocks ads, and it offers a characteristic to mechanically colligate to the VPN when on Wi-Fi.

SurfEasy permits torrenting but this feature is only in stock happening the SurfEasy VPN plan (erst the Ultra VPN design). To connect to one of those servers, you click the nation list and then choice the "Torrent Optimized" option. The only other life-threatening setting that SurfEasy's app offers is whether to activate the VPN app connected inauguration.

SurfEasy allows you to use capable five devices simultaneously, and there are apps for Windows, Mac, Mechanical man, and iOS. The website still claims it supports proxy extensions for Chromium-plate and Opera, but if you dig a little deeper you quickly observe out that those extensions are No longer supported.

SurfEasy costs $29.88 for the initiative twelvemonth, covering up to five coincident connections, and in that location's a 14-Clarence Day money-back guarantee. After that first yr on that point are two options for rehabilitation pricing happening Windows. You can pay $77.88 for the SurfEasy VPN contrive that includes five simultaneous connections and no region limits. Alternatively, at that place's the Total VPN plan, which costs $47.88, covers the same number of devices, but has a more limited region option. There are as wel month-to-month plans if you only motivation a VPN for a short time.

Operation

SurfEasy's country choices.

SurfEasy at in one case was one of the fastest VPNs we tested. It still remains in our top 10 (albeit the lower half), only its speeds aren't as stupefying as they at one time were. In our tests, SurfEasy retained 38.1 percent of the base bucket along compared to 55.28 percent four years ago.

Your experience with SurfEasy—operating theatre any other VPN—may vary depending along your ISP, router, device, and connection type.

As we sawing machine four years ago, SurfEasy has connective issues. Shoemaker's last time we reported how the connection would stall for a couple of seconds later on first connection. This is still natural event, and really at that place's no excuse for these continuing issues.

Some other important thing to note is that all SurfEasy server we used was track in Amazon's cloud.

Privacy, namelessness, and trust

To sign in the lead for SurfEasy the company requires an email address, and those who wish to could use a pseudonymous email address. That won't beat you very far in terms of namelessness, however, as SurfEasy does not offer whatever significant way to compensate anonymously operating theatre semi-anonymously. All payments are handled via a reference card or PayPal. There are no options for stipendiary in immediate payment operating theater with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

SurfEasy is part of NortonLifeLock, the last mentioned is based in Tempe Arizona and the CEO is Vincent Pilette.

Atomic number 3 for SurfEasy's privacy insurance policy, it's okay just non slap-up. The policy says the service does not log your browse and internet activenes, merely it does lumber your IP address "for the purposes of delivering the self-satisfied in accordance with your twist(s) and determining the appropriate language settings for communicating with you." NortonLifeLock says IT also logs your device make and character, Oculus sinister version (mobile devices only), and aggregate bandwidth usage. It also collects some diagnostic information that you can show about in the privacy policy.

Conclusion

To sum up, SurfEasy has not changed in any real way in four years. A charitable account would be to say it's in maintenance mode, but it sure feels more than like benign leave out. If you need a cheap VPN for a single year, and you wear't mind the privacy policy, it's quite a lot. For nearly $50 operating theatre $80 after that, though? No more fashio. This VPN is simply not competitive at those prices compared to what you can get elsewhere. IT has no significant features to speak of, continues to have connection issues, the website has some inaccurate information, and the app is not great. The VPN carrying out is still fine, though non American Samoa good as it once was.

If whol you'ray looking for is a good connection to watch Netflix, or you need something cheap for that first class past SurfEasy could work for you. After that, we cannot recommend it at the prices the company is charging.

Editor in chief's note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the armed service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.

Greenbac: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may bring in a minute committal. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.

Ian is an independent author based in Israel who has ne'er met a tech submit helium didn't comparable. He chiefly covers Windows, PC and gaming hardware, video and music streaming services, social networks, and browsers. When he's not screening the news He's working on how-to tips for PC users, or tuning his eGPU setup.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/407381/surfeasy-vpn-review.html

Posted by: leehaile1944.blogspot.com

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