NordVPN is a VPN service provider you’ve probably seen advertised extensively across the internet. It’s not quite as fast as some of the competition but it’s cheap, providing you commit to a long-term plan.
NordVPN offers military-grade level AES-256 encryption and promises that no logs are kept, so your browsing is entirely anonymous. It also uses something called CyberSec, which blocks ads and malicious websites for you, saving you the risk of inadvertently browsing a suspicious website.
Elsewhere, there’s also the Double VPN feature that enables you to encrypt your data twice, effectively hiding yourself twice as much as with a regular VPN service. It’s a feature that might seem like overkill for many users, but every once in a while it could be useful.
For more regular use, there are helpful features like an automatic kill switch, DNS leak protection (which covers an extra level of potential risk associated with sending unencrypted queries), and that all-important no logging policy.
For those keen to use torrenting facilities or stream Netflix from other countries, NordVPN caters for such interests. While speeds aren’t quite as impressive as ExpressVPN, they’re still more than good enough. Don’t expect the user interface of the app to look great though: NordVPN is full of great features hidden behind a fairly ugly and dated looking server map.
Though we’re not huge fans of NordVPN’s Windows app, it’s still a solid bet for Windows users thanks to it having a fairly minimal footprint on your hard drive. It’s also great value.