Surfshark VPN review: Good performance, good options
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Surfshark VPN is a Netherlands-based commercial VPN service, first launched in 2018. Surfshark is available for macOS, Windows, and Linux, as well as browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge. There are also versions available for Fire TV 2 and later, and Android TV OS 5.0 and later.
Surfshark at a Glance
- Unlimited simultaneous connections with any supported devices
- Fixed servers available
- Multiple hop servers are available
- IKEv2, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks and Wireguard . protocols
- split tunneling
- RAM servers only
- kill switch
- GPS spoofing for Android users
Surfshark Features
Surfshark, like other VPN services like IPVanish or NordVPN, works very similarly in how they offer, pay for, and manage their services. All features are the same no matter what plan or subscription period you have, the only factor that sets you apart is the price. There is no free version of Surfshark VPN service.
A month-long subscription is the most expensive way to get a VPN, with the current price at the time of writing $12.88 per month ($15.95 CAD, converted with Google). If you choose to pay for 2 years at a time, that price drops 81% to $2.49 per month, or a third option at 50% off if you sign up for 6 months at a time, at $6.42 per month. The two-year plan also comes with a 30-day refund/guarantee option, but there’s no mention of refunds or trials for the monthly or six-month plans.
Surfshark offers a variety of payment methods, including:
- Credit card
- PayPal
- Google Pay
- Amazon Pay
- Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dogecoin.
Surfshark offers unlimited simultaneous connections regardless of devices used, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited P2P traffic, although it does not have servers set for P2P and so speeds can vary depending on server load. However, a very rare thing with commercial VPN services is the option to use multi-store connections, where you first connect to hop #1, for example, the UK, and then connect next to a server in France. Obviously, this will likely reduce speed, but it does add another layer of protection. Even when using multi-store servers, one should never assume that their connection is bulletproof, completely anonymous or protected, but it’s perfectly fine to have that handy.
Surfshark: Supported Clients and Protocols
The Surfshark client displays a number of different information right on the first page, such as a list of favorite connections, all sites, static IP address specific sites, and MultiHop sites; In addition to the connect button that changes to display information such as your IP address once you connect to the specified server.
There is no default protocol set for Surfshark, but “Auto” is the default, which chooses the fastest and most stable option for you. However, you can easily change to other protocols via the drop-down box. There are other options available such as “NoBorders” which is useful for bypassing internet restrictions like the Great Chinese Firewall, as well as a built-in speed test option to see what your connection to different servers will look like. When I connected using the “Auto” setting, WireGuard was what the client often chooses for me, and it became a popular and respected protocol to use, so I had no complaints with this decision.
Surfshark: Servers
Surfshark has servers in more than 65 locations, with countries ranging from Algeria, Canada, USA, Singapore, Iceland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and more.
Surfshark doesn’t have specific servers for things like P2P traffic or Netflix connections, so your performance for P2P traffic may vary depending on the connection, and your streaming services connection may also vary.
Surfshark: Privacy and Security Features
In terms of security features, Surfshark provides:
- Internet kill switch – Automatically turns off all networks and public Internet access if the VPN is disconnected, when enabled. It should be noted that even if you close the VPN software; If you enable this and forget to disable it, your entire internet access will be cut off until you disable the feature – this can be helpful for security, but only something you need to consider if you suddenly realize that you don’t have internet access when using this VPN service/feature .
- Wireguard Protocol – A new protocol coming into the VPN world, featuring open source code, significantly faster speeds as well as safer power savings and more secure than other protocols.
- Shadowsocks – Mostly used to avoid firewalls and censorship, it’s not really designed for privacy or anonymity.
Surfshark: Speed Tests
For a Surfshark speed test, a base test without the service was first performed. The computer used was connected to a 250 down / 20up connection in Canada. Using speedtest.net for testing, the results were as follows:
Without a VPN, connected to a speed test server in my city:
- Ping – 12 ms
- Download – 245.71Mbps
- Download – 19.60 Mbps
Then, connecting to the VPN and letting it use the server location it considered the best, which ended up being in a city next door to me, yielded the following results:
- Ping – 12 ms
- Download – 219.16Mbps
- Download – 18.61 Mbps
Result 2, I chose Iceland as my preferred country and ran the speed test again, to the following results:
- Ping – 131 ms
- Download – 233.04 Mbps
- Download – 9.06 Mbps
Overall, I really thought the speeds were perfectly acceptable, there’s really nothing to complain about, a quick P2P test also confirmed that those speeds were all accurate. Overall, there was no speed or connection wise that I had any problems at all. As I’ve written about other VPNs in the past, I personally wouldn’t use this VPN while gaming if I was connecting to any kind of international servers, as higher votes (>100) will likely negatively affect my gaming experience, but I will . You don’t see any problem using a local server while gaming, if someone needs to do that.
Surfshark Privacy Tests
Note: This section has been edited since the first posting, based on the information provided in the comments section, and re-tested with better results!
If your VPN is leaking your IP address or any DNS information, it’s not doing its job, so two tests were used to see how Surfshark is performing.
Extended DNS version leak test: Passed (https://www.dnsleaktest.com)
Originally, I tested Surfshark while using Firefox, and encountered huge DNS leaks…however, as one commenter from Ghacks pointed out, the problem was due to Firefox using DNS over HTTPS. After disabling this feature, I restarted the DNS test, and found no DNS leaks, which was a huge relief given the great results other sites have given Surfshark. This is important to note, since for other Firefox issues this DNS leak issue may occur if they are using Firefox with default settings, and the DNS feature over HTTP is enabled!
IP Leak Test: Passed (https://ipleak.net/)
There are no problems when running an IP test, the IP address appears as US.
Surfshark opens testing of streaming platforms
Surfshark has limited ability to unblock regionally locked content. There are no specific servers designed for this, and many of the major streaming services have Surfshark IPs blocked or blacklisted.
I wasn’t able to watch any content on Netflix when I tried it…However, interestingly enough, there was no error popup, or that Netflix would connect me to use a VPN…Instead, the videos weren’t loading, and I’m just going to face Black screen.
I have tried many servers, same crash will happen; So I can only be able to believe that Netflix is still firing / disconnecting / not feeding content due to VPN. I haven’t tried every server available to me, so maybe others will get better results or get lucky; But after trying a few servers and only getting the same result, I considered this enough to test for this article, and continued, considering that this basically failed.
A look at the Surfshark desktop app for Windows
Interacting with the Windows client is very easy, although it took me a second to find the options menu, located by clicking the gear icon in the lower corner of the user interface. However, after I found it, it didn’t matter, and clicking through the menus allowed me to find whatever I was looking for fairly quickly and easily.
Rule
Surfshark is loved by many because it is all about speed and ease of use, and without obvious or glaring issues, I have no reason to say anything negative about this VPN; It’s cheaper than some of the others, although it may not be the cheapest, it has multi-store connections, and there are many security protocols to choose from.
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Abstract
Article name
Surfshark VPN review: Good performance, with DNS leaks
Describe
Mike’s review of Surfshark VPN.
author
Mike Turcot McCusker
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gax technology news
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