CyberGhost VPN Review: Fast, Secure, And Affordable

CyberGhost VPN is one of the VPN services we highly recommend whether you are protecting your PC, your smartphone, or your Android TV box.

As the online world becomes more sophisticated, more people are realizing how important it is to protect their privacy online with VPN services. But, you shouldn’t just be using VPN on your PC.

A VPN on an Android TV box can help you unlock geofenced content, use Kodi safely, and protect the payment details you have submitted to streaming services such as Netflix.

But there are a lot of options on the market, and it can be difficult to know which provide the protection that they promise, as well as value for money.

We highly recommend CyberGhost VPN because it ticks a lot of boxes in terms of security, usability, price-point, and desirable features. But read our complete review to decide whether CyberGhost VPN is the right service for you.

Wait … What Is A VPN?

Wait … What Is A VPN?

If you have gotten this far and still don’t know what VPN is, here is our quick answer …

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, which allows you to funnel your internet connection through an encrypted tunnel. This makes you appear like you are accessing the internet from a different location and using a different IP address.

Why would you want to do that? You might want to ensure there is no record of your internet activity for privacy reasons – even the government can’t access your internet activity if you use a good VPN. You might also want to appear like you are somewhere else in the world to access restricted services, such as the U.S. version of Netflix and BBC UK programming.

It is 100 percent legal to use a VPN in the United States and most places in the world. However, activity that is illegal without VPN is still illegal with VPN. But that is your business.

CyberGhost VPN Review

Our Score

Overall, we highly recommend CyberGhost VPN and give it 4.5/5 stars. In fact, we think that it is the best VPN service on the market.

4.5
Out of 5

Pros

Cons

It is easy and straightforward to use and offers coverage for all your devices for a good price. Its speeds are adequate, while its connection options and security features are top-rate.

The VPN also offers a lot of additional features that make things like torrenting and TV streaming safer and more effective, a kill switch to protect your security, and split tunneling, so you can simultaneously access some websites through VPN while excluding others.

Our only real issue with CyberGhost VPN is that it does not work in mainland China (but it does work in Hong Kong), so it is not the option for anyone living or traveling in China. Otherwise, it is a fantastic service.

Connectivity Options

You can also cover pretty much all of your devices with just one VPN subscription. Firstly, you can register up to seven devices on one subscription, so you can cover your computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet, and TV Box, PlayStation, and router with one subscription.

The industry average is five devices per subscription, so this is a nice boon, though there are a few services out there that put no limit on the number of devices you can register.

The ability to apply CyberGhost VPN to your router is also a nice feature as it means you can protect everything on your network at the source.

CyberGhost VPN also provides convenient apps for pretty much every device you can imagine from PCs and Macs, iPhone and Android smartphones, TV Boxes, Smart TVs, Routers, and gaming machines such as PS4 and Xbox One/360.

While the native apps are convenient, some of them aren’t quite as sophisticated as the apps you get with other providers. But they more than do the job.

Torrenting And Streaming

There are no restrictions in terms of the type of traffic you can pass through CyberGhost VPN.

For example, some VPNs are impossible to use with BitTorrent. This is both because they don’t support the speeds but also because they might let the occasional packet leak, resulting in your IP address being exposed. This is much more likely to happen when torrenting because of the number of packages being exchanged.

CyberGhost VPN has dedicated servers beefed up specifically to support torrenting, all of which are clearly marked in the application so you can choose the right ones. You can also program the VPN to automatically connect to torrent-friendly servers when you open your torrenting application.

It also has servers optimized for video streaming. This can be more problematic with a VPN than many users imagine, as services such as Netflix are constantly developing new ways to identify and block users using VPN.

Again, CyberGhost VPN has servers which they work on regularly to ensure that they aren’t detected so they offer you the best chance to access your favorite shows when you want and where you want.

Testers had no problems accessing more than 35 different streaming services using the VPN, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+. Since accessing these services tends to be a make or break feature for many TV box users, this is a big tick for CyberGhost VPN.

Get the best results by choosing one of the servers that CyberGhost has dedicated for streaming. They also have servers specifically earmarked for downloading and torrenting.

Network Distribution

CyberGhost VPN Review

CyberGhost VPN also gives you a lot of options, no matter what you are looking for. They have more than 6,500 servers distributed across 90 different countries, which means you can appear to be accessing the web from pretty much anywhere in the world that you like.

Also, the more users are passing through a server, the slower the speeds, so their wide network also means fewer users per server and faster speeds. The most popular locations can still be a bit crowded, but if you don’t need to appear in a specific location, you can get great speeds.

CyberGhost’s servers are actually located in the countries in which they are listed. That might seem like a given, but is not true for all VPN services. Many virtualize their servers to make it appear as if they are based in that country. That is fine, but if you choose a certain country, for example for torrenting because torrenting is permitted there, you want to know that the server is actually there.

Warning!! While CyberGhost VPN has servers in China and you can access local Chinese content via these servers, the reverse is not true. You CANNOT connect to external CyberGhost VPN servers while you are in China.

Speeds

Layering your internet connection with a VPN almost always has a negative impact on network speeds as you bounce your connection around the world. Different VPN services offer different speeds depending on the location, configuration, quality of their servers, and the number of users being pushed through the servers.

Tests show that CyberGhost VPN offers good speeds, though not the fastest on the market. When connecting via the most popular U.S. and UK servers, you can expect speeds of 65-75 Mbps, which is more than enough even to stream 4K films.

Cost

When it comes to cost, CyberGhost VPN is pretty much smack-bang in the middle of the market. You can get it for as little as $2.25 if you want to commit to three years or $3.49 per month if you are willing to commit to two years. But we think this seems like a long time considering how rapidly the digital world changes.

If you want to pay on a monthly basis, expect to pay out a hefty $12.99 per month. If you want your own dedicated IP address, that will set you back an additional $5 per month on top, regardless of which package you choose.

We think the safest deal is probably their one year contract, which will set you back $3.99 per month. It is a bit more than some other VPNs, but CyberGhost is a high-quality VPN.

You can buy your subscription securely on their website using major credit cards, PayPal, or Bitcoin.

They also offer a 45-day money-back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with their services. No questions asked and there is no need to provide any details or evidence for your dissatisfaction with the product.

That is how confident they are about their product, and we suppose that 36 million users around the world can’t all be wrong.

Security

CyberGhost’s security protocols are good. They claim to offer double 256-bit AES encryption, which means that both the authentication connection is encrypted as well as the VPN connection. This is the default for subscribers and you don’t need to do anything special. This means fewer leaks and hacks, and fewer chances of your data being exposed.

There is also a no-logs policy, which means that CyberGhost is not logging your internet activity. They do not record IP addresses, DNS, queries, browsing history, connection/disconnection timestamps, session durations, bandwidth, or the VPN server you connect to.

So, if they were served with a court order to turn over information on their users, they don’t have the information to pass on to authorities.

CyberGhost VPN, which is owned by the parent company Kape Technologies PLC, has headquarters in Bucharest in Romania, and so they are subject to Romanian laws. This is a good thing as far as a VPN is concerned as Romanian laws strongly support the right to digital privacy.

However, Romania is also part of the European Union, which also attempts to control data privacy, but data privacy within the EU is also strong, especially in comparison to the United States.

The company also offers a limited number of No-Spy servers, which are located in the company’s offices rather than remote server sites. These are multi-hop servers that offer an extra layer of encryption by chaining or cascading two or more VPN servers together.

But CyberGhost VPN manages to keep their standard fees down by making this an additional add-on for people who are highly concerned about privacy. It costs an additional $60 per year on top of standard subscription fees.

CyberGhost VPN’s safety processes have been verified annually by QSCert since 2012, but there is no evidence of independent security audits. These are important for verifying the security claims of the company. For the moment, we only have CyberGhost’s word.

But the company does its best to reassure users and be transparent. They release transparent reports every three months, which provide details of malware activity flags and infrastructure features. Also, to date, they have not been involved in any serious data leak cases.

For those interested in the technical details. CyberGhost VPN uses OpenVPN with IKEv2 as default. The Linux version of the app also uses WireGuard, which gives the same excellent protection but with faster speeds.

Additional Features

CyberGhost VPN also comes with a nice selection of additional features that many clients will like. It provides ad blocking and malicious content blocking inbuilt if you choose to use it, and can automatically redirect to HTTPS versions of websites where available: some websites skimp on this when it comes to their mobile sites.

CyberGhost also comes with a kill switch, which is automatically enabled for users. This stops your internet connection if your VPN drops out for some reason, preventing your IP address from being exposed during a dropout.

It also offers split tunneling, which means you can choose which websites go through VPN and which don’t. So, you can browse Instagram using your full internet connection while a torrent is working away in the background over VPN.

Another nice feature is Wi-Fi protection. This allows you to tell CyberGhost to launch automatically (or not), depending on the network you are connected to. For example, you might set it not to launch if your smartphone is connected to your company’s secure network, but set it to launch when you connect to an unsecured public Wi-Fi network. So, you don’t need to think about VPN when you quickly go online to check for something while waiting for your coffee to be ready at the local cafe.

For Android only, you can also get data compression, which compresses images and app data to reduce the amount of bandwidth you need when you are on a limited network.

Support And Community

While CyberGhost VPN is generally easy and intuitive for even beginners to use, they offer robust support if you do encounter any issues. On their support site, there are comprehensive guides on pretty much everything, as well as quick read troubleshooting and FAQs.

For those who prefer to talk to someone, there are also email and live chat options, though they are a little buried. You need to go into the help section and open the knowledge-base search before the chat option is visible. But once you get there, the team is responsive and knowledgeable.

But you don’t have to rely on the official CyberGhost team to solve your issues. With so many “ghosties” out there using the app, there is a lot of technical knowledge and experience out there. There are Facebook groups and other online forums where you can connect with other users and post your questions.

Pros

  • You can register up to seven devices on one subscription
  • Able to apply VPN protection at the router covering all devices on your network
  • Dedicated torrenting and video streaming servers
  • Large and well-distributed server network
  • Privacy policies are solid
  • Provides a lot of high-end features not available with other services

Cons

  • There are more affordable VPNs on the market
  • No-Spy servers only available for an additional fee
  • Does not work in China

Using CyberGhost VPN On Android

Cyberghost VPN is incredibly simple to use on Android. First, you need to subscribe to the service and set up an account on the CyberGhost website. This will give you a username and password.

Then, you just need to download the CyberGhost Android app from the Google Play store directly to your Android smartphone or Android TV device. When you launch the app, it will give you a pin code. Simply validate the displayed pin code on your online account to authorize your Android TV device. If you don’t have access to the website, you can also choose to simply log in with your username and password.

Once you are in the app, the home screen will inform you that you are not connected to the VPN service, and there is a big connection button you can use to get started. By default, this will be set to “best location,” which will choose the fastest available servers for you. But if you want to connect via a specific location, just click on the location button and browse for the location that you want.

To connect or disconnect from the VPN, just open the app and hit the main button to disconnect and repeat the same process to reconnect.

The Verdict

We highly recommend CyberGhost VPN, whether you want it for your PC, smartphone, or Android TV device. You can cover all of your devices with a simple subscription, which covers up to seven devices.

CyberGhost is highly competitive on pricing, and also on the coverage. They have one of the biggest networks of servers available, and have airtight security features and protocols for maximum protection.

Tests suggest you still get very fast speeds with CyberGhost VPN activated, certainly more than enough bandwidth for streaming. And streamers will love CyberGhost. Their servers that are earmarked for streaming currently unblock more than 40 streaming services, including the most important ones such as Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, Disney+, BBC, ESPN, and more.

The app for Android is easy and intuitive to use with great features such as a kill switch, Wi-Fi protection for automatic VPN on unsafe networks, and even automatic data compression to improve connectivity when bandwidths are limited.

There are just some of the many reasons we highly recommend CyberGhost VPN and list it as our preferred VPN for Android TV.

If you have any experience of using CyberGhost VPN, please share below in the comments to support the community.

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