AirVPN Review

By Lucian Armasu
published

AirVPN was the top write-in choice on our VPN survey, and today we're pairing our own test results with your reader assessments.

Five-Star Reader Ratings

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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: The client software works well with an easy installation. Speed doesn't suffer significantly if I let it choose a foreign node (for example, Canada from the U.S.). By default, the client chooses a connection in a country other than the one I connect from.✗ Cons: So far, nothing.☁ Comments: Many locations to choose from and good speeds over VPN.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: AirVPN is easy to set up and use, and provides fast connections.✗ Cons: Its documentation on how to fix DNS leaks, which seem to be more of a problem with Windows than with AirVPN, is too light. ☁ Comments: Inexpensive, solid connections, and doesn't keep logs.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: Port Forwarding / DDNS and Geolocation routing - In order to bypass discriminations based on IP address geo-location, they execute only strictly necessary double-hops to an additional server (for example to access BBC iPlayer even from non-UK servers). ✗ Cons: Price is a little high.☁ Comments: They go the extra mile by offering OpenVPN, are OpenVPN over SSH and OpenVPN over SSL.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: Granular control of all VPN parameters with network locking feature (prevents leaks), port forwarding, based on OpenVPN, accepts BitCoin and very open and straightforward on the forum. Very good latency and speeds overall.✗ Cons: Servers are based mostly in North America and western Europe, very little in Asia and nothing in Latin America or Australia.☁ Comments: They are serious about privacy and security.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: They absolutely keep no logs and do not comply with any requests for such. I have use them for years and can get 95% of my available bandwidth. Supports multiple clients. Cost is cheap. Privacy is paramount.✗ Cons: Absolutely nothing, honestly - This IS the best VPN service out there bar none - I guarantee it.☁ Comments: Exceptional speed, reliability, cost, and security with a large selection of countries.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: No logs, fast speeds, improving networks over time (3 new servers were launched just 2 months ago), and admins that are true idealists about a free and open internet.✗ Cons: Like all VPNs, you suffer an Internet speed hit as all of your traffic is slowed. However, this is a gripe against VPNs in general not just AirVPN. Of the VPNs, AirVPN has the smallest impact on performance of the VPNs that I have tested.☁ Comments: Easily my favorite VPN of all time.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: Very secure, reliable and fast. Very engaged with its community. Follows well-formed best practices.✗ Cons: I have found nothing to complain about thus far.☁ Comments: Very proactive and responsive service that operates from a properly paranoid perspective.
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☆ Rating: ★★★★★✓ Pros: Strong encryption. Powerful options.✗ Cons: Somewhat expensive. Limited to three simultaneous connections (although up from one previously).☁ Comments: Tons of servers. Great privacy. Can pay in btc.

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VPN Services in the Forums

Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mamasan2000
    Did not see Astrill mentioned.

    Watch that video to get an idea of it's performance (it's very good).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9bhbEm7JAk

    That's what I'd go with. VPN always makes you loose bandwidth, the question is how much. Less the better.
    Reply
  • getochkn
    On my PC, using the PIA client, I only go down less than 10mb. I get 100mb/s without VPN, 92mb/s with VPN. The problem is trying to get it running on a router, then the speeds drop down to 20-30mbs. Router CPU's just can't handle VPN's with full speed yet. Sucks because I rather my router is VPN'd, then everything that connects goes through that connection. Most VPN's don't give you like 30 accounts and when you have a ton of devices in your house, it sucks. Also things like chromecast, roku's, etc, can't connect to a VPN directly without using a router, then I loose 70mb/s.

    Someone needs to make a VPN router. lol.
    Reply
  • Urzu1000
    I'm a little surprised to see this article. I just finished a free three-day trial of AirVPN last night.

    I've been testing out multiple VPNs over the past year, and I've gone from TorGuard to Private Internet Access, to IPVanish. All three of those were "Meh" in terms of the quality of their services.

    Then I tried AirVPN, and no pun intended, I was blown away. It had a proper client, lots and lots of transparency, stability, and best of all, speed.

    The other VPNs have been pretty inconsistent speed wise. IPVanish in particular was a bit odd. I did a speed test, and the speeds appeared amazing. However, in practice, I got much less than that on downloads. It could have been coincidence, considering how much that service lost connection, but it still seems a little shady.

    All in all though, I'm going to be purchasing a quarterly subscription to AirVPN later today.
    Reply
  • JacFlasche
    Well Tom's suggestion that PIA was a good service was totally wrong if you are interested in actual P2P speed. As I said in my response to the other article my actual download speed is 15 times faster over iPredator than the damn PIA account I bought on your advice. Unless you do download tests with actual movie files, what does it matter what the speed is, if the service is downgrading or filtering P2P activity. I tried every connection on PIA and the best I could get on a popular movie over P2P was 23Kb compared to over 600 on iPredator.

    What do you think the average person uses VPN for? It sure as hell ain't playing games online.

    Do a real test with a download over P2P
    Reply
  • Urzu1000
    16696463 said:
    Well Tom's suggestion that PIA was a good service was totally wrong if you are interested in actual P2P speed. As I said in my response to the other article my actual download speed is 15 times faster over iPredator than the damn PIA account I bought on your advice. Unless you do download tests with actual movie files, what does it matter what the speed is, if the service is downgrading or filtering P2P activity. I tried every connection on PIA and the best I could get on a popular movie over P2P was 23Kb compared to over 600 on iPredator.

    What do you think the average person uses VPN for? It sure as hell ain't playing games online.

    Do a real test with a download over P2P

    I can confirm that P2P downloading is extremely fast with AirVPN. They don't throttle it. During my three day trial, I downloaded ~80GB of files via torrents. They weren't the most popular in the world, with only a handful of seeders each, but I got on average around 3-5 MB/s download speed, which leads me to believe they don't throttle it at all. I was lucky get get 800KB/s with the others.
    Reply
  • getochkn
    Well I guess Tom's isn't interested in the movie torrent piracy aspect of VPN testing.
    Reply
  • ToineF
    When you click on the AirVPN logo, it doesn't bring you to the right website I think... or is it just me?
    Reply
  • paolob
    There is a critical mistake in the article, ToineF is right... when you click on the AirVPN logo or in the "Buy" icon you are directed to a totally different VPN web site which has nothing to do with AirVPN! The correct web site is airvpn.org
    Reply
  • Fabrizio76
    In more than one week, the article author Lucian Armasu don't read any comment on his article? Unbelievable.
    Reply
  • paolob
    Links have been fixed (Oct 7).
    Reply