Surfshark VPN Review: Blood in Water?

Surfshark became popular after it was bought by NordVPN, and then with the announcement of the Nexus VPN standard. Product announcements aside, however, how good is Surfshark really and are there any visible traces of takeovers by NordVPN? I’ll take a look at this complete review.

What can Surfshark do?

All in all, Surfshark is a decent VPN. It does everything you need a virtual private network, including encrypting your connection and falsifying your location. It also works well on the move to Netflix, though that, of course, may not stay that way forever. You can also use it for torrenting. However, it also has some drawbacks, especially its mediocre speed.

Tip: See our guide on what a VPN is if you want to learn more about the basics of a VPN.

As a result, Surfshark is difficult to set up. Although it is among the best VPNs thanks to the extremely low price of its initial plan and is currently doing well with streaming, I’m not quite sure if that suits its low speeds. It has also failed in some other areas, some more important than others.

For example, in June 2022 it has an extensive network of servers, with over 3,200 servers in 65 countries. This is roughly on par with NordVPN, which has about 5,000 servers, albeit in a smaller number of countries (60).

ExpressVPN, on the other hand, serves over 90 countries, while HideMyAss has servers in 210 countries (more countries than the UN; it identifies several dependencies as independent countries for this math to work). While 65 countries are good and will be good for most people, Surfshark doesn’t stand out for that either.

Another thing that annoys us a bit about Surfshark is its very long connection time. While I appreciate that setting up a VPN tunnel between the two servers isn’t current, I’m not sure why Surfshark sometimes takes up to ten seconds. NordVPN, for example, only needs a few seconds to do so.

Such small distractions make Surfshark feel a bit unpolished from time to time.

Join Netflix

However, many of these minor criticisms are offset by how well Surfshark handles Netflix, or at least how well it works at the time of writing, in June 2022. The simple fact remains that when you use a VPN for Netflix, you’re never sure if it will work or not . In the past, for example, Surfshark has had big problems cracking Netflix, as have other VPNs, such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

However, at the moment, Surfshark is where it is. When I tested, every single British server I tried worked right away, as did those in the United States. In fact, it went so well that I only tried three times instead of the usual five or so. Hulu seemed to work pretty well, although it seems that Amazon Prime Video is still banned, which is normal.

I was very surprised at how well Surfshark manages streaming services, to be honest, because it used to have problems in this department. However, there is one development that may contain an answer: the Surfshark Nexus.

Surfshark Nexus

Surfshark Nexus is a newly developed technology that allows Surfshark to randomly assign IP addresses. While I admit that I was a little skeptical at first about this (VPNs make many promises that are rarely fulfilled), it seems to work pretty well, at least for Netflix. The improved speeds promised by the Nexus are still a long way off.

However, another explanation could be that Surfshark managed to get hold of a large number of “pure” IPs to get into Netflix. Whatever the case, it’s working right now, and it’s doing well.

Surfshark NoBorders

Another interesting feature that Surfshark offers is NoBorders, which promises special technology for overcoming Internet blocks. This may seem like a great purchase if you need to escape censorship, but luckily you don’t need anything special for it. Any VPN can solve this for you, so if you don’t like Surfshark, you can simply use another service.

Like its acclaimed multi-hop connections, this is just part of an advertising copy set up by Surfshark to attract customers. In this case, and for most others, all you need to worry about are the basic features, which Surfshark handles well enough.

Price: How much does a Surfshark VPN cost?

Although I may look less than enthusiastic about Surfshark in general, it has one big advantage: it’s quite cheap. If you apply for a two-year plan, you pay a little less than $ 60, while a one-year plan is only $ 48 (there will be a banner on the site claiming that this offer is temporary; it is not).

However, there are a few caveats to this price: it only applies when you first sign up. As it is written in small letters which is a little too transparent for our taste, after the end of the initial period you will pay $ 96 a year. Not surprisingly, automatic renewal is turned on for user convenience.

With $ 30 a year, Surfshark’s teaser rate is a good buy, but with almost $ 100 when the promotional period is over, I’m much less interested in it. For that money, it would be much better for you to sign up for ExpressVPN — we compare the two providers in our ExpressVPN vs Surfshark article if you want to know more details.

NordVPN does roughly the same thing, offering a very low rate to start with, and then increases dramatically when it comes time to actually sign up. For our money, I recommend that you enroll in one for two years, and then for the other when that period expires. After four years, you can opt for the second, third, cheap service. I do not recommend paying the full price for Surfshark.

Surfshark’s return policy

If you’re not too sure about Surfshark, but two years of service for $ 60 sounds good, then you’ll be happy to know that there is a 30-day money back guarantee. However, you should know that you will have to endure some tricks to do this, even though you will get your money back.

For example, when I went to get our refund, I had to send a total of four emails to support Surfshark. Every time I sent our kind request to comply with their money back guarantee, I got something back asking us to reconsider, usually reciting one of their marketing claims about how Surfshark is the best, etc., etc.

Again, I ended up getting our money back, it just wasn’t an easy process.

Interface: Easy to use on any device

Using Surfshark is easy. The interface is very well put together and you will have no problem figuring out how to use it. It avoids the NordVPN graphical interface (see our article Surfshark v. NordVPN to see where it differs) for the sake of simplicity that has a list of servers on the left and a connect button on the right.

It’s simple and gives you a great overview so you never feel truly lost. The worst thing I can say about this is that the interface stuttered a bit from time to time, although it could be because I tested it on a virtual machine with Windows 10. In addition to the long connection time, Surfshark is easy to use.

Note: Surfshark VPN has applications available for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android, with extensions / add-ons for Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

I also like the settings screen accessed via the vertical bar on the far left. It clearly sets out all your options, which is great because you’ll need to change a few to make the most of Surfshark, which I’ll talk about next.

Security and privacy: fantastic after some settings

When it comes to how safe Surfshark is, the news is mixed. When it comes to your private data, the service claims that the VPN is unrecorded, so it does not keep a book of your network activities while it is connected. In the end, you always have to take these claims as pure value, but for now, there’s no reason not to believe Surfshark’s claims.

However, when it comes to how confident you are, there are a few things to keep in mind. The first is that Surfshark will automatically assign you a VPN protocol unless you change this when it connects to the server. Many VPNs do this, but Surfshark has an annoying habit of using the IKEv2 protocol by default, which is fast but not so secure.

I guess Surfshark does this to make up for its modest speeds, but we really don’t like IKE and recommend that you change the protocol to something else — OpenVPN-TCP is always good. I did this and, as a result, my speed test results in the next section are quite lower than in most other reviews.

Another oversight on the part of Surfshark is that exclusion exclusion is excluded by default, something else that shares with NordVPN. I really don’t understand why this works, as the unlock switch is a pretty important part of your security setting because it will turn off your internet connection if the VPN fails. Luckily, you can turn it on easily, but I think the weird thing is that it’s off by default.

Of course, we performed security tests on several Surfshark connections and everything turned out pure as a whistle. As far as we can tell, Surfshark is perfectly safe.

Internet speeds: less than high

When it comes to internet speeds, Surfshark usually does well, as long as you use its protocol switching method, which, as mentioned earlier, I guess is usually set to the somewhat unforeseen IKEv2 by default. However, when set to OpenVPN, Surfshark speeds are awesome, taking a hit of over 80%, even in relatively close locations.

I conducted tests from Cyprus and connected to servers in Israel, the UK, New York and Japan using OpenVPN-TCP. Our base speed without VPN included was north of 100 Mbps. I took each reading three times to make sure there were no anomalies; anyway, I took the best score. Below you can find a table with my readings.

As we recommend in our VPN Speed ​​Test Guide, I used speedtest.net for our measurements.

As you can see, these results are pretty bad. Generally speaking, a server as close as the one in Israel (approximately 300 km or 200 miles away) should give us decent speeds because distance is the biggest factor in calculating VPN speed loss. However, I had speeds just as bad as those on connecting to New York, which is more than 5,000 miles away.

You would usually attribute this to a server that has a bad day, but the fact that the server in London (3,000 km or 2,000 miles away) still has only 17 percent of the original speed shows that the problem is probably systemic. Even considering how far Japan and the US are from Cyprus, these speeds are still pretty bad.

The bottom line is that if you want a connection that is both fast and secure, you may want to look beyond Surfshark.

Should you choose Surfshark over other VPNs?

Surfshark is a little hard to set up: while I like how well it handles Netflix and how cheap it is for first-time shoppers, it lacks a certain shine that other services have. Add to that its mediocre speeds – which can affect your Netflix experience – and I’ll get through it in general.

However, if Netflix is ​​your top priority and you don’t mind using Surfshark’s default protocol, it might be worth buying, especially at the starting price.