Torguard VPN (2020) Review: A VPN That Doesn't Suck
what everyone my name is James and today we're gonna be reviewing the VPN service Beauregard name similarly to the anonymous communication software tour tour guard takes a similar approach to anonymity and packs its VPN up the wazoo with hugely configurable security options however the learning care may be steeper than you think with that said it feeling like you're in the driver's seat when it comes to your internet security sounds appealing to you watch on it see exactly what makes Tor guard tick as always we'll first be examining the services price structure upon hitting tour guides landing page you'll immediately see the services they offer not limited to just the VPN this alsoTorguard VPN (2020) Review: A VPN That Doesn't Suck
includes anonymous proxy or email services or a bundle that combines all three services including their VPN that aside however will definitely be examining the VPN in specific navigating to the pricing page will list out tour guards as subscription options the website does lists for plans to choose from the monthly at $9.99 the quarterly at $19.99 a semi-annual plan for $29.99 and the annual plan at $59.99 one subscription option that's hidden until you proceed to the purchase page is the biennial plan so two years and that goes for $99.99 so overall pricing wise tor guard is definitely cheaper on most fronts than top competing VPNs out there and for the plans you get a seven day free trial upon choosing a subscription fort or guard you'll also be presented with various add-ons which range from dedicated IPS to upgraded premium networks these add-ons will run you $7.99 a piece for this review I pretty much just chose to roll with a monthly plan as usual I didn't tack on any extra services tourguard accepts credit card credit card stripe PayPal crypto currencies like Bitcoin and litecoin as well as a few other payment options ultimately though once you've purchased a service you'll then be taken to a confirmation page which will then redirect you to the download page when it comes to downloading and installing on either desktop or mobile the process is simple tour guard supports most of the major platforms out there windows Mac iOS and Android as well as Chrome and Firefox extensions the windows download in specific is nice and that it lets you specify the drive in which you'll be installing this is something that other VPNs tend to skip over and they install to your C Drive by default which I find annoying on mobile simply hop on over to the app or Google Play Store and give tor guard a download okay so next let's talk about the application itself because this is where the mobile and desktop version cannot be more different in terms of user friendliness and configurability so starting with a mobile version because it's on the easier end of the spectrum the home screen is super simple with a few options to tap on the main ones here are obviously the
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connect button in the server location menu or you could pretty much navigate through a list of Tor Guard servers back on the main menu you have a favorites icon in the upper left hand side that lists all the service that you've dropped a heart aka favorited then lastly the Settings icon in the upper right hand side will then take you to a pretty straight forward sections menu with only the option to configure auto connect connection type as well as your dedicated IP if you decided to purchase that pad on for the record the mobile version only allows you to protocols IPSec and IP to moving along to the desktop this is where things get much more configurable but unfortunately much clunkier as well initially the Tor Guard app appears to have a small desktop form factor like some really well designed VPNs out there like Viper and expressvpn however that's where the similarities end I don't know if it's because I was recording on a 4k monitor but the interface didn't really scale up as well by default in our testing and one design flaw I noticed is that if you try to resize the app window with the hope of making things easier to see well you're kind of out of luck because it does scale up to fill the screen but does nothing to adjust the size of the text or drop down menus one way to fix this issue is if you do go into the settings menu on the general tab check out the high DPI scaling factor which does increase the size of the app with respect to your monitor but again trying to scale the window has no effect or bearing on or menu size so on the other hand touching on the settings menu this is where you'll find a wealth of heavy customisation options the general tab giving you lots of auto-connect configurability as well as the options to configure the apps appearance as previously mentioned the app Hill tab is essentially tar guard version of a kill switch for specific apps in the event that you lose tor guard connectivity it will automatically shut down any applications you list in this window skipping over to the network tag gives you many options to customize a wait or guard interacts with DNS connectivity as well as some leak preventative options for WebRTC and ipv6 so this brings me to connectivity issues that arose during our testing that I felt like I needed to bring up in this review and I want to preface this section by saying this experience might be completely different for you depending on your network setup in your connection settings so the app in general may have been incredibly intuitive and a breeze to get a connection going for you and if so then I'm genuinely happy for you because not gonna lie did we have one hell of a time just simply attempting to connect to various service with a default settings so by default the settings in the network tab prevent ipv6 leak and blocked outside DNS are both checked off which according to some
troubleshoot articles I pulled up prevent the client from detecting an IP and thus preventing you from doing any sort of connectivity while connected through tor guard on open VPN this was further reinforced by the Tor guard customer service rep who had chatted with whose solution a troubleshooting the connection issue was unchecking block outside DNS as well as changing tor guards name servers from the default open dns to Google this is in addition to a list of other setting
options that he had me configure all in all the fixes did work after a PC restart I was able to connect to a server and get a verified IP address but more problems arose after disconnecting from the initial server for instance after a successful connection to Dallas in the United States disconnecting and then reconnecting to a server in Germany or Brazil for instance would cause another connection error where the client wouldn't be able to detect an IP address unless another PC restart was made as you can probably imagine in our case testing eight different servers multiple times a piece for our speed test segment was made a whole lot more tedious because of this issue now granted I imagine for most of you you're not gonna be flip-flopping between servers and running crazy benchmarks numbers like v10 adieu whilst testing a VPN but even then I think a PC restart for even something as minor as one server change is definitely an inconvenience so overall our take on the tour guide UI is that compared to other VPNs which are just a lot more user-friendly and just straight up work right out of the box or in this case installer tour guard had a lot more hoops to jump through before getting it into a semi working state amended Lee I'm not a network expert so maybe some of these troubleshooting steps would have come a lot more naturally if I was for instance more network savvy maybe some of you guys out there are more network savvy but as a pain user of the VPN it would have been really nice to have something that was a little more intuitive straight out of the box especially when you consider that some of the default settings can straight up prevent a connection in some cases that said I do have to commend the efforts of the Touareg our friend who assisted me in getting a connection set up they stayed on the chat line after a few PC restarts and they did help get me up and running so I don't mention customer support enough in these VPN reviews and that's mostly because I don't typically have to deal with a VPN customer support in the first place in most cases but it's nice to know that when needed tour guard staff are definitely helpful if you have any questions about their VPN so taking ten steps back from these issues yes there are some UI and connectivity issues that can create a steep learning curve and user friendliness but if you're a network savvy individual who has no issues troubleshooting a connection you'll find a wealth of configuration options at your disposal all right so moving along to security and privacy this on the bright side is definitely something that tour guard does excel at and when running properly it becomes one of the most powerful and secure VPNs on the market there is a host of different encryption configurations that you can customize whilst connected to four guards three thousand-plus servers two of these features are called stealth VPN s tunnel selfie pn4 443 is a port that can be selected while connected through tor guard it wraps your Open VPN connection in SSL and TLS encryption reroutes traffic through a typical HTTP port and masks your connection as normal internet traffic Stunna on the other hand is a useful option that allows you to bypass blockages in the university's public Wi-Fi hotspots are even censored countries this adds yet another layer of encryption to your VPN tunnel especially when you're trying to connect to places such as work or other areas with strict internet restrictions at this point I think it's a given to say that there were absolutely no DNS IP or web RTC deletes in our testing so lastly we'll be taking a look at tor guard speed with its emphasis on security as well as the previously mentioned connectivity issues I presented it earlier it might be easy to dismiss tor Guard as a VPN that experiences slower connectivity speeds however that's far from the truth as tor guard does perform admirably in the
Torguard VPN (2020) Review: A VPN That Doesn't Suck
speed category even whilst connected via heavier cipher encryption methods such as AES 256 cbc so with that said after some tedious benchmark tests we have a VPN that performs very well whilst giving you powerful security our benchmark for this round of testing was 13 ping 70 1.19 down and 11 point 59 upload speed in the US we tested four guard servers in San Francisco the Seattle Chicago and New Jersey and averaged 54 ping 57 point 42 down and eight point 93 upload speeds roughly equaling a 122 percent difference in ping 19 point 34% download decrease and twenty two point ninety five percent upload decrease worldwide our combined test for Brazil Germany Japan and Thailand averaged 178 ping 47 point 51 down and 5.14 upload speeds that is a 173 percent difference in ping a 33 point 26 percent decrease in download speed and a fifty-five point 67 percent decrease in upload speed so in hindsight these speeds draw comparisons to other rebn services such as cyber ghost you're obviously not getting blazingly fast beads like top-tier like Express or Nord but at the same time you have to take into consideration in many cases you will be running through a much more secure VPN tunnel with summit or guards features enable sort of wrap things what are our impressions of Tor guard well to put it simply it's not for the faint of heart as far as the majority of VPN consumers go as someone who's admittedly a fan of minimalist and easy to use VPNs that work right out of the box for instance Viper VPN Express or even private Internet access I couldn't shake the feeling that regard was inherently clunkier as a VPN not to mention the connectivity issues
initials and initial set up to get the VPN running they create a barrier between my user experience and the testing however with that said there's no denying that once properly setup tor guard is hands-down one of the most secure and powerful VPNs out there laying down layers of encryption whilst maintaining respectable VPN speeds anywhere in the world and you can get past into more complicated configuration options and a clunker UI tour guard affords you one of the most customizable security sets in any VPN and one of the most secure VPN tunnels on the market so that'll do it for this review if you found it helpful it'd be greatly appreciated if we could drop the video a thumbs up let us know in the comment section down below what other VPNs you'd like us to take a closer look at next and if you haven't already done so make sure to subscribe again my name is James and I will catch you on the next one peace