PrivadoVPN for PC [Review] - Is It Close to What You Expect?

If PrivadoVPN piqued your interest, you should better consult a comprehensive review like this one before entrusting the provider with your data or purchasing a subscription.

The VPN service was launched in 2019 and is a pretty recent addition to the VPN industry, compared to other popular services that have been around for many years.

PrivadoVPN is based in Switzerland – a country with a very privacy-friendly jurisdiction. Besides, it operates on a zero-log policy, which means that it neither tracks nor records your online activity.

Therefore, from a privacy standpoint, you can entrust PrivadoVPN with your sensitive data, without fearing it might be sold to other parties or shared with the government.

If you want to find what PrivadoVPN for PC brings in terms of price, speed, servers, security, anti-geoblocking efficiency, as well as other features, continue reading, as we included all you need in this review.

PrivadoVPN – what does the PC version offer?

Before deciding whether you should consider this VPN as a reliable option for your daily browsing, you need to take into account a few aspects, the main ones being described below.

Plans and pricing

PrivadoVPN includes a free plan, a monthly plan, and a yearly plan. Each provides the same privacy and security standards. However, the free plan is more limited in terms of features.

For instance, it offers only 10GB of data/month and a single connection. Also, it allows you to connect to VPN servers in 12 cities only.

The 1-month and 1-year plans are both full-featured, meaning that they give you unlimited data, access to servers in 59 cities, and allow up to 10 simultaneous connections.

If you get a monthly subscription, you’ll pay $7.99/month. However, if you go with the 1-year plan, you will save 38% and pay $4.99/month billed as $59.88/year.

Is PrivadoVPN easy to use?

PrivadoVPN is available on all the popular operating systems and devices, offering native apps for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV.

The VPN clients for PC have an easy-to-use interface that will easily allow you to connect to a VPN server with just a few clicks, as well as navigate through the settings and various features.

All you need to do is download the appropriate version for your device, follow the installation instructions, and you’ll have PrivadoVPN up and running in no time.

How fast is PrivadoVPN?

In order to accurately determine how fast Privado VPN is, we ran multiple speed tests while connected to different VPN servers across various locations worldwide.

Generally, VPN speed is influenced by factors such as the distance between your physical location and that of the VPN servers, encryption type, VPN protocols, ISP speed, etc.

In the table below, you’ll see the independent results for different performance metrics affecting the overall speed (ping, download speed, and upload speed).

In addition, we included the average for all the results, as well as the percentage decrease in download speed.

Server	Ping	Download	Upload	Distance	Decrease
Romania (starting)	19 ms	240.85 Mbps	153.12 Mbps	N/A	N/A
USA – New York	223 ms	105.20 Mbps	124.25 Mbps	7,300 km	56.32%
USA – Los Angeles	340 ms	100.64 Mbps	110.01 Mbps	10,300 km	58.21%
Canada – Montreal	234 ms	115.66 Mbps	110.48 Mbps	7,000 km	51.97%
Mexico – Mexico City	332 ms	91.62 Mbps	107.68 Mbps	8,950 km	61.95%
Brazil – Sao Paulo	238 ms	103.30 Mbps	133.64 Mbps	10,550 km	57.11%
UK – London	75 ms	115.11 Mbps	107.73 Mbps	1,750 km	52.20%
France – Paris	75 ms	113.93 Mbps	101.69 Mbps	1,600 km	52.69%
Germany – Frankfurt	72 ms	113.28 Mbps	106.89 Mbps	1,150 km	52.96%
Netherlands – Amsterdam	85 ms	110.61 Mbps	109.87 Mbps	1,450 km	54.07%
Average	186 ms	107.70 Mbps	112.47 Mbps	5,561 km	55.27%

The starting location (without PrivadoVPN) was Romania. Therefore, it’s understandable that we got faster speeds while connected to VPN servers in other European countries.

However, Canada (Montreal) was a real surprise given how far it’s situated from the starting location. Actually, it had the highest download speed (115.66 Mbps).

What do the speed results mean?

The average download and upload speeds are 107.70 Mbps and 112.47 Mbps respectively, while the average ping stands at 186 ms.

With a 55.27% decrease in download speed, the result is close to half the speed that was recorded in the original location.

What this means is that PrivadoVPN performed decently if we also account for encryption and distance. However, there are VPN services that will give you faster speeds for the same locations.

Features you can enjoy with PrivadoVPN

While PrivadoVPN doesn’t offer as many features as other competitors with a higher reputation, it does provide strong privacy and security, as well as some common VPN features.

PrivadoVPN Features	Availability	Name
✔Servers	59 cities in 46 countries	N/A
✔Encryption	256-bit-AES	N/A
✔Protocols	OpenVPN, IKEv2, WireGuard	N/A
✔Kill switch	Windows, macOS, Android	Kill Switch
✔Split tunneling	Android and Amazon devices	Split Tunneling
✔Proxy	All devices	SOCKS5 Proxy
✔Connections	Up to 10 devices	N/A

➡Servers

PrivadoVPN comes with hundreds of VPN server locations across 59 cities in 46 countries. For a newcomer to the VPN market, it includes a pretty diverse server network.

Some countries only offer a single VPN server location, whereas others, such as the US, offer multiple server locations across different cities.

By connecting to these servers, you will manage to surf anonymously, privately, and safely, as well as bypass geo-blocking from different parts of the world.

➡Encryption

In terms of security and privacy, PrivadoVPN can certainly be trusted, as it uses AES-256-bit military-grade encryption that represents the industry gold standard.

This encryption algorithm is used by top intelligence and military agencies around the world, including the NSA. No hacker would manage to crack it, either by using a brute-force attack.

➡Protocols

The AES encryption works with different VPN protocols in order to reroute your traffic via a secure tunnel and establish a secure connection with the VPN server.

PrivadoVPN lets you choose from 3 VPN protocols: OpenVPN, IKEv2, and WireGuard. OpenVPN is open-source and is widely used by most VPN providers. It is very secure, fast, and reliable.

IKEv2 is another popular VPN protocol that is supported by many VPNs. Besides using strong encryption, it is also ultra-fast, sometimes surpassing OpenVPN.

WireGuard is the newest protocol in the VPN industry and is a much lighter version than OpenVPN. It uses top-notch cryptography for utmost security, ensures fast connections, and is expected to soon become the new standard.

➡Other features

A very important security feature that is available for the PrivadoVPN desktop apps is the Kill Switch, which prevents IP and sensitive data leaks when the VPN connection drops abruptly.

For example, sometimes the VPN may experience connectivity issues, during which time your traffic won’t be encrypted. Thus, only a few seconds are necessary for your data to leak.

However, when you activate the Kill Switch, it will constantly monitor your VPN connection for any interruptions and cut off your Internet until the VPN connection is properly restored.

PrivadoVPN also offers Split Tunneling but only for Android and Amazon devices. Unfortunately, there’s no split tunneling currently available for the VPN desktop clients.

PrivadoVPN – is it good enough to meet your needs?

All in all, we consider PrivadoVPN a slightly above-average VPN service based on our testing. If you need strong privacy and security to keep your devices protected, you can certainly rely on it.

Also, while this VPN is not the fastest, its speed will allow you to surf and stream content without buffering or interruptions. As for torrenting activities, higher speeds are required.

As far as geo-blocking is concerned, PrivadoVPN spoofs your location very effectively and even unblocks some popular streaming services, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, or BBC iPlayer.

Now, let’s sum up PrivadoVPN’s main strengths and weaknesses so you can have a more clear image of the product in the end.

Pros

✅Best-in-class encryption

✅Supports the WireGuard protocol

✅Pretty fast connection speeds

✅Kill Switch for desktop

✅User-friendly apps

✅10 simultaneous connections

✅30-day money-back guarantee

✅Free plan and affordable prices for premium

Cons

❌No split tunneling for the desktop apps

❌Doesn’t offer obfuscation or multi-hop

❌No adblocker or browser extensions

❌There’s no smart DNS or dedicated IP

Finally, we are confident that this review offers an objective description of PrivadoVPN, which should help you make up your mind in case you were skeptical.

If you’re undecided about whether this VPN offers a good value for your money or not, get the free plan and test the product before wasting your money only to be disappointed afterwards.