NordVPN Review

There are a lot of virtual private network (VPN) services out there, and even if you eliminate the fully free ones (you really should; VPN trials are the way to go) and shortlist the best premium VPN services, there are still at least a handful of options that are well worth considering.

And one of the top contenders in that shortlist is NordVPN. It’s a great place to start for those intimidated by VPNs, and the more you’re willing to buy, the cheaper the monthly cost becomes.

Compared to its competitors, NordVPN hangs around the middle for typical monthly pricing but, as is the trend, you can bring that pricing down by paying for a longer period of time. So how much is NordVPN? While the usual monthly cost of the Standard plan is $12.99 per month, you can slash that to $4.59 a month on a one-year plan or cut it back further to $3.29 a month on the two-year plan.

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. Below is a breakdown of costs for NordVPN.

NordVPN has a few plans to choose from, there is the Standard, Plus, and Complete plans. Here's what each plan offers: 

Standard: 

• High-speed VPN
• Ad blocker and malware protection

Plus: 

• High-speed VPN
• Ad blocker and malware protection
• Data breach monitoring
• Password manager

Complete: 

• High-speed VPN
• Ad blocker and malware protection
• Data breach monitoring
• Password manager
• File encryption
• 1TB of cloud storage

You'll pay more with each plan upgrade, but you'll get more features which each one. And here’s how NordVPN stacks up to the other VPN competitors in the top five.

This is one of the highlights of using NordVPN. Of all the VPNs I’ve tested, NordVPN is the fastest to connect. Like any VPN, sign up for an account, download the software onto your PC (or app on a supported device), then use your NordVPN login details to connect. From here, NordVPN offers a user-friendly ‘Quick Connect’ button that will find the VPN server closest to your location and connect really, really fast. NordVPN is so fast to connect that real-time online tasks like music streaming with minimal buffers don’t skip a beat, which can’t be said of Hotspot Shield.

Disconnecting is ever-so-slightly more painful in comparison to other VPNs that simply disconnect as soon as you click or tap on the ‘Disconnect’ button. For NordVPN, hitting ‘Disconnect’ 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. To put it into context, in my months of testing NordVPN, I didn’t ever use any of the pause options.

NordVPN offered over 5,500 servers in 60 countries, and though NordVPN is very much in the top five for best VPN services, that server count is behind CyberGhost and PureVPN, while it has the lowest number of countries to connect to out of all five.

There are some quirks to using NordVPN, too. Certain servers will effectively stop you from being able to connect to particular websites – for instance, our sister site WhistleOut – which is unnecessarily limiting. This wasn’t the case when testing between NordVPN and Hotspot Shield. The other quirk was NordVPN would sometimes notify me that it was connected to a server but the dashboard would say it’s still connecting, which created doubt as to whether I was actually connected (even though my tests proved I was).

A single NordVPN account is enough to cover six devices connected simultaneously. NordVPN is supported on the following devices:

Note that if you have a router that supports NordVPN, whenever you connect to NordVPN via your router, all devices on your home network will be connected to the VPN. You can connect more than six devices this way, but it also means that devices you may not want to have a VPN connection will be automatically connected, removing the flexibility to switch servers or disable/enable NordVPN on a per-device basis.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that the NordVPN Chrome extension is less reliable than using the software on PC, so you’re better off avoiding it.

Though a VPN can be used for any number of online activities, connecting to a server – even a local one – tends to result in slower download and upload speed as well as higher latency. Below is a table of the speeds I was able to achieve with a Superloop NBN 100/40Mbps FTTC connection in the middle of the day while using NordVPN.

While upload speeds cop a walloping on US servers, download speeds are still very, very useable for downloading larger files and streaming content across multiple devices (with an NBN 100 or above connection). The table below takes the 14% download-change percentage from above and applies it to average typical evening download speeds (TEDS) for different NBN speed tiers, relative to the max bandwidth requirements of 4K streaming services and the number of possible simultaneous streams allowed (note that Hulu has an unlimited screens add-on).

Tests show that NordVPN is able to get around geoblocked US streaming services, including HBO Max, Hulu and Peacock, plus it also allowed access to the Netflix US library (playback was spotty on the Edge browser but great on Chrome).

There are some great perks that come with a NordVPN subscription. Including:

• A zero-log policy, which means the VPN service doesn’t track, collect or share your data, and it uses RAM servers these days, which can’t store permanent data.
• Internet Kill Switch. This feature adds another layer of security preventing unprotected access to the internet through the server.
• Split tunneling for app-based control.
• For additional protection, you can enable CyberSec to block ads and manage malware.
•  Smart DNS service, which can be used to access is activated in the Nord Account dashboard and is a speedier workaround (compared to a VPN) for supported international streaming services.

One of the bigger VPN showdowns is between NordVPN and ExpressVPN. NordVPN has more servers (5,500+ vs 3,000+) but ExpressVPN has servers in 94 countries compared to NordVPN’s 60. Both VPNs share many of the extras, though NordVPN offers malware protection via CyberSec while ExpressVPN has 24-hour live chat. Speaking of support, ExpressVPN has a wealth of guides online and more supported devices (including video guides for how to configure individual devices).

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 connections, go with NordVPN. If you want fantastic support, servers in more countries, and faster overall connection speeds, ExpressVPN is the better pick.

Yes, NordVPN is absolutely a worthy purchase, held back by a handful of quirks, none of which are deal-breakers. Invest in the yearly or biannual plan to get the most value, then take advantage of an intuitive service that just works and is a great fit for first-time VPN users.