Optus Mobile Review ALDI Mobile Review Amaysim Mobile Review Belong Mobile Review Circles.Life Review Vodafone Mobile Review Woolworths Mobile Review Felix Mobile Review Best iPhone Plans Best Family Mobile Plans Best Budget Smartphones Best Prepaid Plans Best SIM-Only Plans Best Plans For Kids And Teens Best Cheap Mobile Plans Telstra vs Optus Mobile Optus NBN Review Belong NBN Review Vodafone NBN Review Superloop NBN Review Aussie BB NBN Review iiNet NBN Review MyRepublic NBN Review TPG NBN Review Best NBN Satellite Plans Best NBN Alternatives Best NBN Providers Best Home Wireless Plans What is a Good NBN Speed? Test NBN Speed How to speed up your internet Optus vs Telstra Broadband ExpressVPN Review CyberGhost VPN Review NordVPN Review PureVPN Review Norton Secure VPN Review IPVanish VPN Review Windscribe VPN Review Hotspot Shield VPN Review Best cheap VPN services Best VPN for streaming Best VPNs for gaming What is a VPN? VPNs for ad-blocking And one of the contenders at the very top of that short list is NordVPN. It’s a great place to start for those intimidated by VPNs, and the more you’re willing to pay, the cheaper the monthly cost becomes. Note that these NordVPN plans have gone up by one to 28 cents since we first reviewed NordVPN in 2020, so buying in sooner means securing a better price for longer. On top of this, the annual and biennial plans have reduced initial pricing, which reverts to a US$99.48 annual fee for both options after that prepaid period has passed. If you don’t mind paying more initially, NordVPN has one of the cheapest adjusted monthly fees on that two-year option in comparison to other VPN providers. Ultimately, price shouldn’t stop you from trying NordVPN because it’s a value-packed service, but you can take advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee, then buy one of the longer-duration plans if you like it.If you don’t mind paying more initially, NordVPN has one of the cheapest adjusted monthly fees on that two-year option in comparison to other VPN providers. Disconnecting is ever-so-slightly more painful in comparison to other VPNs that simply disconnect immediately. For NordVPN, hitting ‘Disconnect’ on the Windows software brings up four options: pause for five minutes, pause for 15 minutes, pause for an hour, or fully disconnect. Given how quickly NordVPN connects, this additional disconnection step feels more like an inconvenience than anything else. For context, in my years of using NordVPN, I haven’t ever found a practical use for any of the pause options. At the time of updating this review, NordVPN offered 5,500+ servers in 60 countries and across 83 locations, and though NordVPN is very much in the top five for best VPN services, that server count is behind CyberGhost and PureVPN. It also has the lowest number of countries to connect to out of our top five VPNs. There used to be some other annoying software quirks, but they’ve been ironed out with patches. NordVPN proves to be even more convenient in my Android and Android TV tests, where disconnecting is refreshingly a tap away. The table below gives you an idea of how NordVPN might work with your NBN connection. It uses extrapolated speeds based on the current download speed averages from the latest ACCC NBN data (from participating NBN providers) to give you an idea of how the best-case 13% and 31% download speed changes for US and UK servers might impact your overall download speed when using NordVPN. The three columns on the right offer the number of simultaneous streams per connection. While Netflix has a maximum of four simultaneous streams per 4K account, Hulu and BBC iPlayer have options for unlimited streams. These numbers may become ridiculous with faster NBN plans, but it helps to highlight the difference in speed impact between slower and faster plans. NordVPN has also added malware blocking via a Threat Protection feature that’s disabled by default. We like this extra layer of security to a service that already boasts military-grade protection, and it’s a nice touch that you can see the threats it’s blocked once activated. NordVPN is faster to connect but ExpressVPN had consistently faster speeds once connected in our tests, plus disconnecting on ExpressVPN involves a single click rather than fumbling around with a drop-down menu. Picking a winner out of the two close-competing VPN services really depends on what you want. If you want a great price for lots of servers with fast and intuitive server connection, go with NordVPN. If you want fantastic support, servers in more countries and faster overall connection speeds, ExpressVPN is the better pick. In terms of how we’ve scored them, though, NordVPN has an edge over ExpressVPN.
