Hotspot Shield – VPN review

Pros

Lightning Quick
Hotspot Shield does its job through thousands of servers worldwide, which means less competing traffic, and a reduced chance of performance-inhibiting bottlenecks. These servers are, however, clustered in just a handful of countries, so your mileage may vary according to where in the world you’re connecting from.

Slick interface
It’s easy to overlook the importance of a good interface – if you’re connecting in an unfamiliar location, after all, you don’t want to have to spend 10 minutes tweaking settings.

The Hotspot Shield GUI is about the most attractive we’ve ever seen – it’s a major selling point. It’s elegant, functional, and easy to navigate. You’re presented with your upload and download speeds as well as your virtual IP address. Servers can be selected via a world map – which, as well as being intuitive, makes you feel like you’re repositioning the GoldenEye satellite over Severnaya!

Automatic Connection
Given this VPN’s name, you’d expect it to be geared toward protecting you in a WiFi hotspot. One of the most useful features in this situation is automatic connection to unsafe networks – which saves you the trouble of having to remember to turn your VPN on and off.

Cons

Ads
The free version of Hotspot Shield, like just about every free product of this sort, is funded through advertising. This not only means visual intrusion onto your screen space, but that your data is at risk of being sold to the highest bidder. The company responsible for Hotspot Shield, Anchorfree, maintains it does not share browsing history, but it does share “approximate” location information. Some users might be comfortable with this; others might not.

To be fair to Anchorfree, the company is upfront about the compromises necessary to keep its product free. Obviously, users of the paid-for version of Hotspot Shield don’t have to worry about this.

Inconsistent speeds
While it’s possible to achieve incredibly fast connection using Hotspot Shield, it’s by no means a sure thing. Some domestic connections in the US have been shown to slash upload speeds by around half.

Limited Flexibility
If you’re running a Linux-based machine, you’re out of luck. Hotspot Shield users are also unable to pair Catapult Hydra with TOR, nor any other third-party proxies.

Cost
This service is just slightly more expensive than many of its competitors. That said, if you’re willing to invest in three years upfront, you can cut the cost by more than two-thirds.