Note that the above tests only serve as a general guide as to what you might see when using the service. Choosing a geographically close server should generally give you a faster connection. If you’re connecting to a US server, you can choose a city. I saw no noticeable slowdowns while browsing and didn’t experience any connection drops.įor a given location, you should be automatically connected to the fastest server. Switching between servers is very fast, typically taking just a couple of seconds.
With those speeds, I was able to stream 4K video, video conference in HD, and browse the web without noticing the slightest speed hit. They were also pretty consistent across different times of day. Here are the results broken down by region:Īs you can see, speeds are fairly consistent no matter which server you connect to. This is faster than the average speed I observed last time I tested, and it now places Hotspot Shield towards the front of the pack in terms of speed.
Across all times and locations tested, Hotspot Shield’s average download speed was 207 Mbps. I ran speed tests at various times of day on servers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Hotspot Shield’s tagline is “The Fastest Most Secure VPN Service.” I’ll get to the security part later, but first, let’s see about this speed claim.
Live-chat support could be better and the price could be a turnoff for some users. This provider has solid security and privacy features, but there’s room for improvement. It has a ton of location options, is great at unblocking, and pegs very fast speeds. Hotspot Shield is a secure VPN ideal for streaming.
Note that although Hotspot Shield offers a limited free version, I’ll be focusing on the Premium (paid) service in this review. You can also read more on the criteria I used to test Hotspot Shield and our broader VPN testing methodology here.
There’s a short summary of my findings below but you can read the full review to find out more about this provider and whether it might be a good fit for you. I’ve been using Hotspot Shield to stream, browse, download, and keep my internet activities safe from snoopers such as my internet service provider. You’ll find out the answers to these and more in this review.