Only Hotspot Shield has faster download speeds (0.5% vs 3%), but Mullvad beats Hotspot on upload speeds (3% vs 6%) and latency (1ms change vs 21ms) for Australian server tests.

Mullvad VPN’s minimal changes when connected to Australian servers (Sydney for my tests) are incredibly impressive. For context, while TunnelBear doesn’t say how many servers it has, the next lowest server count of the VPNs we’ve reviewed is the 1,600+ from IPVanish. At the time of writing this review, Greece’s only server was offline, which isn’t great considering Mullvad only has 37 country options, which makes it the second-lowest count behind Norton Secure VPN for our VPN reviews, and there were only 766 servers. There isn’t any information beyond the server name and the at-a-glance logic that green means a server is good to use and red means it’s offline. Back on the location page, click or tap on the down arrow next to a country to select locations, and then use the down arrow next to the location to find specific servers. About eight seconds later you should be online, and disconnecting only takes a few seconds with only minor interruptions to real-time internet services (like music streaming) in my tests. Simply click on the country name, switch to one you like, then head back to the main screen and tap on ‘Secure my connection’. Mullvad starts by recommending Sweden (Mullvad’s home base) as the default connection option, but it’ll remember where you last connected to afterwards. While neither the Windows software nor Android app that I tested for this review are much to write home about in terms of their design, they get the job done in a straightforward way. The simplification returns when it comes to actually using Mullvad VPN.

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