NordVPN: VPN Fast & Secure 4+

Fulfils On Promises

If you want to use internet based streaming and get the benefit of the most/best content it does and "doesn’t" work. If you want to 'hide in plain sight' in a coffee shop or anywhere for that matter and work/browse the interweb... in obscurity, it does the job. You’re anonymous on the network or on your 4G connection, appearing to be in some far flung corner of the world or the other side of the country you’re in. It will make some services "think" you’re in a different country. There are some that do recognise you are using a VPN. Some providers are made to believe you’re on holiday or a business trip and there some that let you access the library but as soon as you try and watch something it flags up that you are using a VPN and asks you to disengage the VPN to carry on. So unless you have a workaround, of which there is a straightforward one providing you have at least two devices that can access WiFi and/or a 4G connection, you won’t be able to view the content of your choice. If NORD can make itself invisible" to ALL it can have 5 stars I’m nitpicking as you get what you’re paying for.

Good overall, but awful start up routine.

Overall the app and the service are good. They work well together and the service seems pretty good.

However, the app has huge flaws. You can select favourite countries for server sites. You’d think that the app would direct to one of those countries as the default at startup. Alas, this is not the case. The app appears to want to exercise it’s own agenda. And you can’t just tap the country you want and go. Instead you get a silly message telling you you’re not protected. Well, d’uh, the app was just launched to initiate the VPN. Surely an icon showing disconnection from the VPN, and which doesn’t interfere with user choices, would suffice. Occasionally then you get a message congratulating you for using the VPN 7 days in a row. This implies a level of tracking that shouldn’t occur and it is a wholly useless marketing message. Finally, even if you select the country you want to connect to, often the app chooses its own default and tries to connect you to that even if the map is pinging the country you selected. Eventually the map re-centres on the default country it has actually chosen, but by then it has already initiated a connection broadcasting your attempt to setup a VPN to the default country. In some cases that could be a huge security risk.

The app and service would get 5 stars if the startup routine weren’t so useless, silly, unreliable, and risky. If this continues I will cancel my subscription.

Developer Response ,

Hello. We do appreciate your feedback and will definitely share it with the team. In the meantime, if you have any questions of requests, feel free to contact us at support.nordvpn.com or Twitter @NordVPN. -Neo

Pretty frustrating.

The app is “Okay”… I can only take their word for it that I’m protected when they say I am. My biggest issue is that the connection is extremely poor or is frequently dropped or something, which results in the app cutting connections for security reason as I’m sure it’s designed that way. They’d rather you have no internet than not being able to protect you. As a result, more often than not (maybe 7-8 out of 10 times) I have to either switch my wifi or data on and off or pause the vpn connection and immediately reactivate it to be able to use data on my phone. It seems to default to cutting the connection then I have to do above said action to remind it that i actually want to be online. It’s rapidly reaching the point where I’m considering just leaving it off and cancelling my subscription because I’d rather be unprotected than having to go through this song and dance every time I want to use my data. As an example…I want to check the weather. Open chrome. No connection. Wifi off and on. No connection. Data off and on. No connection. Airplane mode off and on. No connection. Pause nord 5 minutes. Connection instantly restored. Check weather. The connection may start working at any point during that on and off procedure or I’ll have to go through it a few times.

Developer Response ,

Hello. Have you tried contacting our customer support team to find out what could be causing the issue? We strongly advise you to reach out to them. Our team is ready to help 24/7 at support.nordvpn.com. -A.S.