Despite NordVPN having better performance on paper, it is still plagued by the issue of inconsistency and will suddenly lose the pep in its step at random and inconvenient times. It’s easy to unintentionally leave ExpressVPN connected for days at a time and never even realize it - we’ve done it before.įor this reason, we’re giving this round to ExpressVPN. Other times, however, things slow down to a crawl, and even simple text-based websites can randomly take 30 seconds to load in.ĮxpressVPN, by contrast, is very reliable. NordVPN sometimes functions flawlessly and feels very fast and responsive. Taking a bit longer to get connected to a server is one thing, but the real problem with NordVPN is that the on-paper speeds are not entirely reflective of what the actual performance is like.Īlthough NordVPN has certainly gotten better than it once was and is a respectably fast VPN, it seems to still have the similar stability and reliability issues that we discussed in the fastest VPNs article.
NordVPN can take between 10 and 15 seconds to connect, and even after the software says it’s connected, it can still take a few additional seconds to actually get going.
ExpressVPN can get a stable connection going in about five to seven seconds, and the connection feels immediately stable. However, despite having made progress on paper, there are still a few issues that NordVPN faces when it comes to speed.įor starters, NordVPN takes quite a bit longer to get connected. NordVPN is faster in Hong Kong across the board, and while ExpressVPN manages to have lower ping in Israel, NordVPN gets vastly better speeds.
OpenVPN UDP (Only on Windows, Linux, and Android) To begin, here’s a table showing the specifications of the two: