Surfshark VPN Review: Blood in the Water?

Surfshark has grown in recognition following its acquisition by NordVPN after which with its announcement of the Nexus VPN commonplace. Product bulletins apart, although, how good is Surfshark actually, and are there noticeable traces of the takeover by NordVPN? I’ll have a look on this full overview.

What Can Surfshark Do?

General, Surfshark is a good VPN. It does every part you want a digital personal community to do, together with encryting your connection and spoofing your location. It additionally does a great job of getting through to Netflix, though of course this may not remain the case forever. You can also use it just fine for torrenting. However, it comes with some downsides, particularly its mediocre speeds.

Tip: Take a look at our information to what a VPN is for those who’d wish to know extra about VPN fundamentals.

Consequently, it’s onerous to position Surfshark. Whereas it’s among the many greatest VPNs because of the extraordinarily low value of its preliminary plan and it presently does nicely with streaming, I’m not solely positive if that weighs up in opposition to its low speeds. It additionally misses the mark in another areas, some extra necessary than others.

For instance, in June 2022, it has a widespread server community, with over 3,200 servers in 65 nations. That is roughly on par with NordVPN, which has about 5,000 servers, albeit in fewer nations (60).

Then once more, ExpressVPN serves over 90 nations, whereas HideMyAss boasts servers in 210 nations (which is extra nations than are within the UN; it designates a number of dependencies as impartial nations to make that math work). Whereas 65 nations is okay and can do nicely for most individuals, it doesn’t make Surfshark stand out, both.

One other factor that irks us just a little about Surfshark is its very lengthy connection occasions. Whereas I admire establishing a VPN tunnel between two servers isn’t instantaneous, I’m just a little uncertain why it takes Surfshark as much as ten seconds at occasions. NordVPN, for one, solely takes just a few seconds to do that.

It’s little annoyances like this that make Surfshark really feel just a little unpolished at occasions.

Getting Into Netflix

Nevertheless, loads of these minor criticisms are made good by how nicely Surfshark handles Netflix, or a minimum of how nicely it really works on the time of writing, in June 2022. The straightforward reality stays that when using a VPN for Netflix, you’re never sure if it will work or not. In the past, for example, Surfshark had great trouble cracking Netflix, as did other VPNs, like NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

Proper now, although, Surfshark is the place it’s at. Once I examined, each single UK server I attempted labored instantly, as did those in the USA. The truth is, it went so nicely that I solely tried thrice as a substitute of the traditional 5 or so. Hulu additionally appeared to work fairly nicely, although it appears Amazon Prime Video remains to be off-limits, which is regular.

I used to be very shocked at how nicely Surfshark manages streaming companies, to be trustworthy, because it used to have some bother on this division. Nevertheless, there’s one growth which will maintain the reply: Surfshark Nexus.

Surfshark Nexus

Surfshark Nexus is a newly developed know-how that permits Surfshark to randomize IP addresses. While I admit I was a little skeptical of this at first (VPNs make a lot of promises they rarely fulfill), it seems to be working pretty well, at least for Netflix. The improved speeds promised by Nexus are still far away.

That mentioned, the opposite clarification might be that Surfshark managed to get its arms on a lot of “clear” IPs to get into Netflix. Regardless of the case could also be, proper now it really works, and nicely.

Surfshark NoBorders

One other fascinating characteristic Surfshark affords is NoBorders, which guarantees particular know-how to get previous web blocks. This will likely appear to be a fantastic purchase if you might want to escape censorship, but thankfully you don’t need anything special to do so. Any VPN can handle this for you, so if you don’t like Surfshark, you can simply use another service.

Like its vaunted multi-hop connections, that is only a little bit of promoting copy that Surfshark has put up to attract in clients. On this case, and most others, all you actually need to fret about are core options, which is one thing Surfshark handles nicely sufficient.

Value: How A lot Does Surfshark VPN Price?

Although general I could seem lower than captivated with Surfshark, it has one enormous upside: it’s downright low-cost. In case you join the two-year plan, you pay slightly below $60, whereas the one-year plan is simply $48 (there might be a banner on the positioning that claims this supply is non permanent; it’s not).

Nevertheless, there are just a few caveats hooked up to this value: it solely applies the primary time you enroll. Because it states within the advantageous print that could be a little too translucent for our style, after the preliminary interval ends, you’ll pay $96 per 12 months. Unsurprisingly, computerized renewal has been switched on for the shopper’s comfort.

At $30 per 12 months, Surfshark’s teaser fee is an okay purchase, however at nearly $100 as soon as the promo interval ends, I’m lots much less eager on it. For that cash, you’d be a lot better off signing as much as ExpressVPN—we evaluate the 2 suppliers in our ExpressVPN vs Surfshark piece if you’d like to know more details.

NordVPN does a lot the identical, providing a really low fee to start out with after which upping it dramatically when it’s time to signal on for actual. For our cash, I like to recommend you signal on to both one for 2 years, after which the opposite as soon as that interval is up. After 4 years have handed, you may then go for one other, third, low-cost service. I don’t suggest paying full value for Surfshark.

Surfshark Refund Coverage

In case you’re not too positive about Surfshark however two years of service for $60 sounds good, you then’ll be comfortable to know that there’s a 30-day money-back assure in place. Nevertheless, you need to know that, whereas you’ll get your a refund, you’ll must put up with some shenanigans to take action.

For instance, after I went to get our refund, I needed to ship a complete of 4 emails to Surfshark help. Every time I despatched our well mannered request for them to honor their money-back assure, I obtained one thing again asking us to rethink, often reciting one in all their advertising and marketing claims about how Surfshark is one of the best, and so on, and so on.

Once more, I obtained our a refund in the long run, it simply wasn’t precisely a clean course of.

Interface: Simple-to-Use on Any Machine

Utilizing Surfshark is a breeze. The interface has been put collectively rather well and also you received’t have any bother determining find out how to use it. It eschews NordVPN’s graphical interface (try our Surfshark vs NordVPN article to see where else it differs) for a simple one that has a list of servers on the left and a connect button on the right.

It’s easy and provides you a fantastic overview, so that you by no means actually really feel misplaced. The worst factor I can say about it’s that the interface stuttered just a little at occasions, although that is also as a result of I examined it on a digital machine working Home windows 10. Apart from that and the lengthy connection occasions, Surfshark is simple to make use of.

Observe: Surfshark VPN has functions accessible for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, and Android, with extensions/add-ons for Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

I additionally just like the settings display, accessed by means of the vertical bar on the far left. It clearly lays out all of your choices, which is nice since you’ll want to alter just a few to profit from Surfshark, one thing I’ll speak about subsequent.

Safety and Privateness: Incredible After Some Tweaks

In the case of how secure Surfshark is, the information is combined. In the case of your personal info, the service claims to be a no-log VPN, so it does not keep a ledger of your online activity while connected. In the end, you always need to take these claims at face value, but so far there’s no reason not to believe Surfshark’s assertions.

In the case of how secure you’re, although, there are some things you need to remember. The primary is that Surfshark will, except you modify this, robotically assign you a VPN protocol when it connects to a server. Loads of VPNs do that, however Surfshark has the disagreeable behavior of defaulting to the IKEv2 protocol, which is quick, however not as safe.

I think Surfshark does this to make up for its modest speeds, however we actually don’t like IKE and suggest that you simply change the protocol to one thing else—OpenVPN-TCP is at all times good. I did so and, in consequence, my velocity take a look at ends in the following part are fairly a bit decrease than in most different critiques.

The opposite oversight on Surfshark’s half is that it has its kill swap off as a default, one thing else it shares with NordVPN. I actually don’t perceive why it does this, as a kill swap is a fairly necessary a part of your safety setup as it’ll shut down your web connection if the VPN fails. Fortunately, you may simply swap it on, however I feel it’s an odd factor to have off by default.

Naturally, we ran safety assessments on just a few of Surfshark’s connections, and all got here up clear as a whistle. So far as we will inform, Surfshark is completely safe.

Web Speeds: Much less Than Nice

In the case of web speeds, Surfshark often does nicely, so long as you utilize its protocol switching methodology which, as talked about earlier, I think often defaults to the marginally dodgy IKEv2. Nevertheless, when set to OpenVPN, Surfshark’s speeds are abysmal, taking successful of over 80%, even on comparatively shut areas.

I performed assessments from Cyprus and linked to servers in Israel, the UK, New York Metropolis, and Japan utilizing OpenVPN-TCP. Our base velocity with no VPN engaged was simply north of 100Mbps. I took every studying thrice to verify there weren’t any anomalies; in every case, I took one of the best outcome. Beneath you will discover a desk with my readings.

As we suggest in our VPN speed testing guide, I used speedtest.net for our measurements.

As you may see, these outcomes are fairly dangerous. Typically talking, a server as shut by because the one in Israel (roughly 300km or 200 miles away) ought to give us first rate speeds as distance is the largest issue when calculating VPN velocity loss. Nevertheless, I obtained speeds as poor as these connecting to New York Metropolis, which is greater than 5,000 miles away.

Usually, you’d ascribe this to the server having a nasty day, however the truth that the server in London (3,000km or 2,000 miles away) nonetheless solely will get 17 % of the unique velocity exhibits that the difficulty is probably going systemic. Even contemplating how far Japan and the U.S. are from Cyprus, these speeds are nonetheless fairly dangerous.

The underside line is that if you need a connection that’s each quick and secure, you might wish to look additional than Surfshark.

Ought to You Select Surfshark Over Different VPNs?

Surfshark is just a little onerous to position: whereas I like how nicely it handles Netflix and the way low-cost it’s for first-time patrons, it lacks a sure panache that different companies have. Add to that its mediocre speeds—which can affect your Netflix expertise—and general I’m going to offer it a go.

Nevertheless, if Netflix is your predominant precedence and also you don’t thoughts utilizing Surfshark’s default protocol, then it could be definitely worth the purchase, particularly on the introductory value.