It’s a great touch that PIA VPN offers latency values, color-coding them either green for good (anything below 150ms) or orange for less great. For context, my latency initially claimed to be at 137ms but was actually at 232ms when I tested my connection; on later days, the latency was listed more accurately in the 230+ range but never dropped to acceptable green levels. It’s a shame because PIA VPN is a speedy connector (about four seconds) and disconnector (two seconds), with a few seconds of breathing space to allow for your internet to catch up. Also, add a couple of extra seconds for connections to Australia or UK. Private Internet Access claims to have 28,000+ VPN and proxy servers in 104 locations across 78 countries. That country and location count is decent, but the server count blows every other VPN we’ve reviewed out of the water, with the closest contender being the 7,000+ from CyberGhost VPN. While that server count is impressive, it’s strange that the international servers are consistently slower. PIA VPN’s user interface is incredibly straightforward across Windows and Android (for my tests). It’s a little cleaner on Android but, whichever you’re using, connecting or disconnecting is as simple as tapping the big green connection button, while switching servers is as easy as bringing up the server list and connecting to a new server with another tap. Unlike other VPNs, PIA VPN plays nice with all of my day-to-day online software, including peer-to-peer tools like Slack, and, yes, it performed admirably in my torrent tests. PIA VPN also has a decent range of supported devices, which you can see below: To test all of this with PIA VPN, I use my Superloop NBN 100/40Mbps Fibre-to-the-Curb home internet connection. The table below highlights how Private Internet Access handles server connections in the US, Australia, and the UK. For context, my NBN connection is capable of max download speeds of 99.02Mbps and upload speeds of 44.34Mbps (though the copper cabling in my building stops me from achieving these speeds). Normally, this is where I introduce a table that gives an idea of how Private Internet Access should work with different NBN speed tiers. But given that Netflix and Hulu only have partial support (with a slow buffering speed for Netflix), it doesn’t feel like an accurate indication of real-world use. If you’re after a VPN service for streaming, don’t go with Private Internet Access. PIA VPN scores another easy win in terms of some basic numbers, with more servers (28,000+ vs 5,400) in more countries (78 vs 59) and with more simultaneous device connections (10 vs. six). Both VPN services have zero-log policies, Smart DNS options, split tunneling, browser extensions as well as anti-malware inclusions. Both VPN services also have high levels of encryption, 24/7 tech support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. When it comes to streaming, NordVPN is hands down the better choice, which also carries over to my recommendation between the two VPN services: go with NordVPN.
