A week ago, I started a week with PureVPN. I promised to report back on the experience. In a nutshell…
…it’s been great! I encountered very few problems.
A Week?
A week of me agreeing to use a VPN on all my devices is quite a stress test for the service. During this test:
- I ran PureVPN on macOS (laptop, desktop), iPad, and iPhone
- I participated in numerous (dozens) of video calls using software such as FaceTime, GotoMeeting, and Zoom
- I also made quite a few FaceTime audio-only calls (some parts of my house get poor cell signal so I use FT audio)
- went to at least 300 different web sites just through normal use, plus a variety to test stuff out
- Watched streaming video from YouTube, NFL.com, ESPN, and Apple
- Streaming music from YouTube Music
- Downloaded and listened to music from Audible
- Shazam’d a song or two
- Navigated all over God’s creation using phone directions
- Downloaded new books and sync’d notes using Olive Tree
- Worked with iCloud documents and Office 365 documents on various platforms
- Blew up Dropbox and B2 servers as my backups do every night
- Worked on Roll20
Most of this was on home wifi but also a fair bit on mobile or other wifi. The only time I dropped off PureVPN was when I needed to connect to my work VPN.
Issues
I did not encounter anything I would consider a problem. Service was stable, always available, and virtually transparent from a speed perspective.
However, there are some things that you’ll see with any VPN service unless you’re flying under the radar with your own self-hosted, which has some of its own trade-offs.
First you’ll see more captchas:
And forget editing Wikipedia:
These are just service providers protecting themselves from people hiding beyond VPNs when they want to do something naughty. I suppose if you spend hours each week editing Wikipedia, this could be an issue but for the other 6,999,999,992 humans, it isn’t.
Also my banks, etc. all wanted me to re-authenticate and in general I did more authenticating. This is inevitable, though. It’s trivial for companies to determine if you’re coming from a residential/business IP or a datacenter, and if the latter, they assume you’re a bit grayer.
Other than these minor inconveniences, the service worked flawlessly. In truth, I checked more than once to make sure it was still on because it was set-and-forget.
Areas for Improvement
I do think the desktop client, at least on macOS, could be improved. For example, here’s a comparison of what you see in the toolbar at the top of your screen. Keep in mind these pics are blown up – on a 5K 27″ screen, these icons are 5mm tall. Five millimeters!
At that size, the difference between the green “connected” indicatro and the grey “disconnected” indicator are invisible. I found I frequently needed to click on it to pull the menu down so I could see proper status.
Also once you do click on it, there isn’t much at a glance. You can open the app and there is a “quick connect” option, but no real information on status.
Compare that to Viscosity, a popular macOS VPN client.
Now, you can use Viscosity if you want. PureVPN even has an article on how to do it. So you can either assume the PureVPN client is a Bauhaus-inspired celebration of efficient minimalism or…they just didn’t put a lot of work into it.
The Verdict
These minor complaints aside, PureVPN was a rock-solid solution for me and I don’t have any hesitation recommending them.
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I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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Wow. LEB is now a VPN shill. Will just unsub to this. There are far too many VPN ads already. I dont need another one. bye!
Much agreed. It’s not like these “mAxImUm dIsCoUnTs” deals aren’t already everywhere on the internet and youtube sponsors.
I wanted to see the vpn world these last two days, of course everyone says wireguard the best for the moment of course. I was detected by a website it’s nothing special, and of course every minute google search … super fast calm … now I’m going to look for how to make it quieter ****if possible****, something to do…