The average download speed was 3.27 Mbps, 97 percent less than the baseline, and the upload speeds averaged out to 1.61 Mbps, more than 99 percent below the baseline. To make sure our Opera results weren't an aberration, we ran them again several weeks later from a Midtown Manhattan office.
REVIEW OPERA TOUCH FREE
It was also a steep drop from similar tests of the Opera browser VPN done in the winter of 2017, in which the service's download speeds were only 14 percent less than the baseline and it topped all other VPN services, free or paid. This was the worst performance of the nine free services we examined. The service could upload data at an average rate of 2.8 Mbps, down 92 percent from the baseline. On the other hand, the Opera browser VPN yielded an average download rate of only 5.9 megabits per second (Mbps), a 97 percent drop from pre-VPN testing. Streaming music and video over the Opera VPN connection worked well, and the ping time, or network latency, was acceptable, at 2.5 times pre-VPN speeds. Results from our performance testing of the Opera browser VPN started out well, with a connection time of 4.3 seconds, which is relatively quick compared to some other free services. Because network speeds can vary, we took baseline measurements of each parameter before each service was tested, and average results were compared to the baselines. We tested the free services of nine VPN service providers - Avira Phantom VPN,, Hotspot Shield, the Opera browser VPN, ProtonVPN, Speedify, SurfEasy, TunnelBear and Windscribe - in the spring of 2018 at a suburban New York home provisioned with regular, consumer-grade cable-broadband internet service.Įach service was tested three times using Ookla's Speedtest, and the service's connection times, network latency (i.e., delay), and upload and download speeds were averaged. The fact that we were consistently able to connect was remarkable, although the results might be different on a different day.Ĭaveat: Using a VPN or a proxy service to stream content you're not supposed to be able to access in your location violates all sorts of terms of service, and possibly even some laws, and any streaming service could terminate your account as a result. Netflix actively hunts down and blocks proxy services and VPN services, and getting a stream varies wildly among services, countries and even times of day. The latter doesn't quite explain how we were able to stream either "Star Trek: Discovery" or "Doctor Who."ĭespite the vagueness about the location, OperaVPN's Netflix connection rate was much better than those of many paid VPN services. Google Search seemed to think were in Ukraine, but an IP address locator put "Europe" in Sweden, "Asia" in Singapore and "Americas" in Virginia. We couldn't tell exactly which country we were connected to in each instance. A true VPN would encrypt every piece of internet data going to and from a device, no matter the application handling the data. Opera won't protect other web browsers or stand-alone email clients. It encrypts only the Opera browser's traffic and routes it through a server operated by Canadian VPN provider SurfEasy. The Opera "VPN" is technically a secure proxy service. For that, we recommend a fast, unlimited, paid service such as Private Internet Access or Windscribe. Paid VPNs: Which Should You Choose?īecause this service doesn't protect anything but the Opera browser's data, it's not feasible to use the built-in VPN-like service as a full-time home VPN solution. Most of these plans limit your data usage or network speed Opera's browser VPN does neither, but it's not really a VPN (explained below) and its network performance has become far worse than even the throttled speeds of some other service's.
It's better to use the free plans the best VPN providers offer as samples of their services.
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