Perfect Privacy VPN Review

Verdict

Perfect Privacy isn’t as fast as its rivals, but it’s packed with security features and has been shown to genuinely keep no connection logs.

Introduction

Perfect Privacy is a VPN that’s all about security.

Its range of endpoints is relatively small, but Perfect Privacy’s proven stability and reputation for security mean that it’s an excellent choice for VPN users with specific, privacy-orientated applications in mind.

However, if you’re looking for speed then you should look elsewhere.

Pricing and subscriptions

Perfect Privacy is one of the most expensive VPN services around, priced at $12.99/£10.77 per month, $119.99/£99.47 per year, $214.95/£178.20 per two years.

Even its most economical two-year subscription works out at $8.95/£7.43 per month, which is more than many rivals’ monthly subscriptions.

Privacy and Protection

• Proven no-logging policy
• Transparent about court orders and warrants

The Swiss company is one of very few virtual private network providers that’s been shown to have a genuine commitment to its no-logging policy. When Dutch police seized two of its servers in 2016, no logs were found.

Like many of its rivals, Perfect Privacy publishes a warrant canary to notify users of any court orders or warrants. The service is subject to Swiss law, which does honour international warrants, but recently found that VPN services and other over-the-top service providers shouldn’t be subject to enhanced logging requirements.

Features and Usability

• Has endpoints in 26 different countries
• One of the best collection of security features

Perfect Privacy provides a wide range of apps and connection instructions for every device you need to protect, even though the interfaces aren’t always glossy as some rivals, and iOS users might have to do a bit more manual configuration than they’re used to.

The desktop apps present a simple list of its endpoint server locations across 26 countries, with a button next to each entry that allows you to connect and disconnect from each one. Each server’s maximum bandwidth is listed alongside and, once you’ve connected to Perfect Privacy’s network, you can see how much of that is currently being consumed.

Whether or not you’re currently connected, you can ping all the servers for their response times, and these two bits of information offer a fair predictor of the performance you can expect from each endpoint location.

The service has very flexible kill-switch settings to help ensure that you don’t accidentally send any traffic along unencrypted routes if the VPN connection goes down. By default, it’s only active when you connect the VPN, but you can also set it to be active either whenever Perfect Privacy’s client is open, or permanently, which is a major advantage for people for whom privacy is of critical importance.

Other advanced settings allow you to use “cascading” Multi-Hop connections involving multiple VPN endpoints, a Stealth VPN mode to attempt to conceal the fact that you’re using a VPN at all – useful in countries where their use is restricted by law.

There’s NeuroRouting, which is designed to optimise performance by dynamically calculating the fastest route to get data to and from your desired online location, plus protection against malware, trackers and other online irritants.

You’ll also find more typical advanced options that allow you to select connection and encryption protocols.

Performance

• Significantly slower than group test average
• Not a good option for streaming TV

Perfect Privacy always produces some of the slowest download speeds of any service in my tests, and this round was no exception. You’ll get a perfectly good browsing experience if you’re connecting to Europe, but I’ve generally found it difficult to get decent throughput from US endpoints when connecting to them from the UK.

Speeds via the Netherlands were good enough for anything I wanted to throw at it, from HD streaming to gaming, but Perfect Privacy isn’t primarily designed for those kinds of entertainment-orientated uses. Don’t expect to be able to stream TV while you’re connected.

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