The first impression made by this VPN was rather impressive. With such a vast number of servers with some specialised for specific purposes, it shouldn’t leave any user wanting.
Many of the servers tested did not exhibit any DNS leaks or interception. They also did not disclose at any point that a VPN was being used. This has been an issue in the past that I believe CyberGhost has since resolved. There was unfortunately some DNS traffic logged in the packet capture when using Wireshark.
Privacy was proven to be maintained through all of the tests conducted above. However, it is not conclusive evidence that a leak may never occur or that data cannot be intercepted/hijacked.
Regarding the speed/performance of the servers, the results were not so impressive. Depending on the desired activities, some of the servers had much slower rates than expected. The Romanian servers did have decent rates and that may be due to it being the VPNs primary location.
The download speeds never exceeded 22Mbps which shows a minimum drop in performance of over 50% (when compared to the base download rate). Considering the upload rates, they saw a minimum drop of 25% and a maximum drop of 91%. On average the Upload rates were decent, but surprisingly the closest exit node exhibited one of the worst rates.
The Netflix optimised servers worked smoothly in unblocking geo-restrictions but could not stream well in anything above 4K. The videos experienced frequent buffering when played normally and when skipped through. The buffering often lasted between 2-5 seconds.There are many other servers for the purpose of entertainment via streaming and gaming.
CyberGhost also holds a seemingly pro-torrenting stance with an entire section of servers placed under a ‘torrenting’ tab. The NoSpy servers that offer that extra level of anonymity and are operated independently boasted higher speeds on the website. They did not however provide a better performance according to online speed tests.
CyberGhost offers several VPN protocols to pick from with the newly added WireGuard.There is also AES 256-bit encryption provided for highly secured network traffic. CyberGhost does have a kill switch and allows split traffic in the odd chance a user needs that functionality.
With a decent upload profile and the availability of split tunneling, this VPN could be used for commercial use in smaller businesses. The VPN can also be used for more personal pursuits depending on the location of the user. With most of the download rates experiencing massive drops and the streaming quality being less than satisfactory it’s best for a user to test out the functionality in their country before committing. With zero ping latencies being less than 200ms and very few being close to 200ms these servers may also not be feasibly used for gaming in the reviewers location (South Africa).