Black Fern Jorja Miller has nabbed South Canterbury’s top sports award a year after winning the youth award. Read...

When looking for a top-notch VPN, the two most important things to look for are privacy and speed. While privacy is crucial to a good VPN, speed should not be overlooked. Faster speeds mean quicker file downloads and website load times, a better streaming experience, and just a better all-around experience. I’ve tested numerous VPNs and put their servers from all over the world through countless speed tests to determine the fastest services based on their network averages. I highlight not only the fastest download speeds, but also the fastest upload speeds. Read below to see PCWorld’s curated list of the fastest VPNs available now. Why you should trust me: Here at PCWorld we’ve been testing computer hardware, software, and services since the 1980s. I’m continually testing all of the major VPNs on the market and many lesser-known services in order to curate a list of the very best VPNs across a variety of categories. For a more in-depth guide, you can check out the article on how we test VPN services at PCWorld. Below you’ll find my favorite lightning-fast VPNs and, below those, helpful advice about what to look for when choosing a fast VPN on your own. If you’re looking for even more VPN options, check out my comprehensive roundup of the best VPNs in all categories. Updated May 17, 2024: Check out my latest review of ProtonVPN. It may have missed out on this list of fastest VPNs, but it still sports good speeds and top-notch privacy features. NordVPN – Fastest VPN Pros Excellent speeds Enough features to appeal to power users and novices No-logs policy Diskless servers Cons Expensive Why I like NordVPN Nord regularly appears at the top of many VPN rankings, and it’s no surprise to see it here. In my tests, NordVPN retained 49 percent of the base speed, which is plenty fast. It’s also inside the top 10 for upload speeds. Of all the VPNs here, NordVPN also has to be one of the most feature-packed, rivaling ProtonVPN. It supports multi-hop connections, TOR over VPN, ad and tracker blocking at the server level, and a variety of other options. Who should buy NordVPN With all of the great features included with NordVPN, it can appeal to a wide audience. You’ll need to sacrifice some speed for those features though. However, the speed loss is pretty minimal and you’ll still be able to do everything you want to do while connected. Read our full NordVPN review ExpressVPN – Second-fastest VPN Pros Consistently good speeds Easy-to-use desktop program Broad device support Cons Logs data transfer amounts More expensive than many competitors Why I like ExpressVPN My current favorite as the best VPN overall is a good choice for speeds. It ranks third overall in my download speed tests, retaining more than 53 percent of the base speed in testing. For uploads, it ranks in the top 20, though the differences in speeds there are much slimmer than in downloads. ExpressVPN is one of the more costly VPNs out there at $100 per year. For that money, however, you get solid speeds, a promise to work with Netflix, split tunneling, and a wide range of device support. The app is also pretty easy to use and there are a wide range of country locations to choose from. Who should buy ExpressVPN ExpressVPN is a truly great VPN for everyone. It gives you everything you could want from a top-tier service including privacy, security, and speed. It might not be as fast as my top pick on this list, but it’s still plenty fast enough for most online activities. Read our full ExpressVPN review CyberGhost VPN – Fastest upload speeds Pros Easy-to-use interface Independently verified no-log policy Seriously impressive server spread Cons Lacks some common features such as multi-hop and double VPN Server speeds are hit-or-miss, especially in Asia Why I like CyberGhost VPN The winner for best upload speeds is CyberGhost VPN. While I found that the service had rather average download speeds, I was absolutely blown away by its upload speeds. CyberGhost retained an unbelievable 95 percent of the base upload speed across all of my tests — the VPN’s servers might as well have been in my backyard with those numbers. CyberGhost VPN also has extra features that may interest some, such as streaming optimized servers and a dizzying 9,000 plus servers to choose from all over the world. Other honorable mentions for upload speeds include NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Private Internet Access. Any of those VPNs will do the job nicely if upload speeds are a bigger concern than downloads. These services also promise features similar to CyberGhost VPN such as Netflix compatibility, multi-hop VPNs, and more. Who should buy CyberGhost VPN If you want something that offers a huge server network, and has top-rated upload speeds, then CyberGhost is a good option. Particularly if you work from home and need to connect to a remote work server or you’re looking to upload data securely over a VPN connection, CyberGhost VPN should be at the top of your list. Read our full CyberGhost review Mullvad – The most private speed demon Pros Good speeds Inexpensive monthly plan Unrivaled anonymity Open-source Cons Struggles with unblocking streaming services Smaller server network Lacks some extra features that other VPNs offer Why I like Mullvad If you don’t want to compromise on privacy and anonymity, while still getting solid speeds, then Mullvad is the best choice. This super-simple VPN supports connections via 41 different countries, and it costs just 5 euros per month (around $5.40 at this writing). Mullvad should be considered the “Swiss bank account” version of a VPN, as it actively resists obtaining any of your personal information and provides premium service. Instead of signing up for an account with the standard email and password, Mullvad assigns you a random account number and that’s it. No birth date or anniversary passwords to give you away. One number and that’s it. In my tests, Mullvad performed well in download and upload speeds, maintaining around 48 percent of the baseline with each. That puts it firmly in the top half of all VPNs I’ve ever tested and it’s plenty fast enough to do just about everything you’d want to do. There may be a few faster VPNs on the market, though they won’t provide the same amount of anonymity as you’ll get with Mullvad and sometimes it’s worth sacrificing a little speed for a whole lot of privacy. Who should buy Mullvad Mullvad is ultimately designed for the privacy-conscious user. That being said, it does offer good speeds, so even if privacy is your main concern, you need not sacrifice speed in order to enjoy your anonymity. Read our full Mullvad review Hotspot Shield – Honorable mention Pros Very fast Large country selection and plenty of servers Cons Domain visits are recorded, though not tied to you Expensive Why I like HotSpot Shield To long-time readers of our VPN reviews this will come as no surprise. The previous undisputed fastest VPN, HotSpot Shield, may have had its title usurped but that doesn’t mean it has slowed down. HSS still maintained an impressive 64 percent of base download speeds and 70 percent of base upload speeds in my latest review testing. That is still a standout score. HSS has its issues, as I haven’t been a fan of the company’s privacy policy, though it’s slowly getting better. Of course, it may simply be that to provide the speeds that it does HSS requires the analytics it collects. I can’t really say. Who should buy HotSpot Shield Simply put, if you’re interested in pure speed with your VPN and nothing else matters, then HotSpot Shield is the one you want. You’ll get some other nice features, but speed is the name of the game here and HSS still delivers. Read our full Hotspot Shield review What to look for in a fast VPN The first thing to consider in a fast VPN is, of course, speed. This may be tricky to do since you aren’t likely to be able to test connection speeds without paying to use the service. That’s where online reviews come in. Look for reviews, like ours, that give you a relative average of connection speeds rather than direct Mbps speed comparisons. Next, you should look at a VPN’s server network including the number of servers and locations. It’s difficult to judge any VPN by just one feature, but a semi-reliable way to tell if a VPN is even worth your time is to look at the server spread. Anything with 1,000 or more servers and 30 or more country locations will do. You’ll also want to read up on a VPN’s privacy protections. Does it have a no-logs policy? Has it undergone any independent audits of its servers? Where is the VPN company located? All of these will give you an idea of whether or not a VPN is transparent with its data collection policies and if it’s subject to government data sharing requirements. Other factors you’ll want to take into consideration are the overall ease-of-use, user experience, and any additional features. Some of these features, such as split-tunneling and kill switches, can be extremely useful for certain purposes and might sway your subscription decision one way or the other. Finally, as with all subscription services, you’ll want to review the price of a VPN service. Do you want a monthly or yearly subscription? Some top VPNs might be pricey month-to-month, but actually become quite affordable with long-term plans. How I tested My method for testing VPN speeds is rather straightforward. I average the connections between different global locations for any given VPN and then compare them to a baseline internet speed to get a good picture of the overall connection speeds. I continue this process over multiple days of testing and then average the daily speeds together to get an overall average. I test a total of three days at different times of the day to account for any variation. That overall average is then expressed as a percentage of the base speed. That way the test results provide a sense of how much speed a VPN retains versus hard numbers, which can vary based on internet service providers, routers, and other equipment, time of day, and so on. FAQ 1. What does a VPN do? A VPN (virtual private network) encrypts your internet traffic and disguises your identity while browsing the internet. A VPN will anonymize your online traffic and keep your ISP or other third parties from snooping on your internet browsing. Additionally, VPNs allow you to connect to servers all across the world. So if you’re looking to access location-restricted content, such as streaming services, you can connect to the appropriate country’s server and gain access that way. 2. How does a VPN work? A VPN hides your IP address by redirecting it through a remote server hosted by the VPN company. To anyone looking in, the VPN server then becomes the source of your data instead of yourself. These remote servers can be in your own country or located in different countries around the world. All of your network traffic from your computer to the VPN is sent over a secure and encrypted connection.  When connected to a VPN while browsing the internet, the VPN acts as a middleman between your computer and a website. Your computer sends a request to the VPN which then passes it on to a website. The website then sends its response back to the VPN which forwards it through the secure connection to your computer. All of the traffic rerouted through the VPN shows as coming through their server rather than your own computer. This keeps your ISP and other third parties from snooping on your internet activity. 3. Can you use a VPN to watch Netflix? Yes! If you’re located in a country where particular Netflix content isn’t accessible, you can use a VPN server located in a different region to access that content. While certain streaming services try to prevent VPN connections, you can usually find a server that isn’t blocked. Good VPN companies offer thousands of servers in which to connect to from all over the world. If your intended use for a VPN is to watch a streaming service such as Netflix, connection speeds and unblocked server availability will be the most important factors to look out for. (See our roundup of the best VPNs for our recommendation for Netflix streaming, as well as a host of other use cases.) 4. Will a VPN affect my internet speeds? In the past, VPNs were notorious for slowing down internet speeds. But nowadays it’s the exception rather than the norm. When you connect to a VPN, it reroutes your traffic through its own servers. Depending on where these servers are located, the extra distance can lead to a higher ping. While one of the great features of VPNs is to encrypt your data, this can lead to slower download and upload speeds because it takes time to encrypt and decrypt your data—affecting everything from page load times to video buffering speeds. Thankfully, advances in encryption technology and server optimization by modern VPN providers have significantly lessened these impacts. 5. Do VPNs protect against malware and computer viruses? Unfortunately, no, a VPN will not protect you from malware or viruses. If you use a VPN and accidentally click on a malicious link or download a file containing a virus, there isn’t anything a VPN can do to help. In conjunction with a VPN, it is highly recommended that you use an antivirus program. Alternatively, you can find a VPN provider that offers additional threat protection features to help keep you safe. VPN Read...

Epic gives away games for free. It might be the only reason you have the Epic Games Store launcher installed on your PC — that certainly seems to be the case for a lot of die-hard Steam fans. But whether you actually use the store or just grab the freebies, you’ll want to check out this week’s free game Dragon Age Inquisition, and maybe take a gander at some of the deep discounts in the latest sale. Dragon Age Inquisition is the third game in Bioware’s fantasy RPG series, the more swords and sorcery side of the coin opposite Mass Effect. And it’s been a good while since they made one — Inquisition came out all the way back in 2014, also released on consoles as old as the Xbox 360 if you can believe it. Even so, it was hailed as a great sequel (particularly following the ho-hum Dragon Age II) and a treat for RPG fans who wanted good writing as well as focused action gameplay. As always with Epic giveaways, you can claim it for the next week (ending next Thursday, May 23rd) and keep it associated with your account forever, to download and play whenever you want. Not bad for a game that still goes for $40 on Steam, and this “GOTY Edition” includes all the extra DLC missions and the goodies they made you pay extra for at launch. Not bad. As for the sale itself, it’s a smaller selection of titles than usual, but it seems to be focused on big AAA games from huge publishers, the kind of thing that always gets top slot in my YouTube advertising. Notably there are a lot of Sony-published games here that used to be PlayStation exclusives. Here are the games I’d hop on if I had a lot more free time than I do (and hadn’t played several of them already): Dead Space (remake) $59.99 $20.99God of War $49.99 $24.99Horizon Zero Dawn Complete $49.99 $12.49Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown $49.99 $29.99Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart $59.99 $35.99Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands $59.99 $14.99 And the rest of the discounts, if your tastes aren’t a good match for mine: Alan Wake II $39.99Assassin’s Creed Mirage $24.99Assassin’s Creed Valhalla $11.99Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition $53.59Dead Island 2 $29.99Dying Light 2 $29.99EA Sports FC 24 $13.99Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game $31.99Far Cry 6 $14.99Grand Theft Auto V $14.99Hogwarts Legacy $29.99Lord of the Rings Return to Moria $17.49Lords of the Fallen $34.99Mortal Kombat 1 $34.99Red Dead Redemption II $23.99Remnant II $29.99Skull and Bones $29.99Spider-Man Remastered $35.99Spider-Man: Miles Morales $29.99Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League $27.99The Crew Motorfest $34.99The Last of Us Part 1 $40.19Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection $24.99Witchfire $35.99 You’ve got plenty of time to pick one of these games up…or wait for the other game stores to offer the same discount. The sale runs until June 13th. Video Games Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating ProsFeels like a desktop replacementHas a large keyboard with a good layout for gamersReally powerful performanceConsThe display isn’t as colorful as an OLEDThe keys are a bit mushyThe charging brick is huge, which reduces its portabilityOur VerdictThe Dell G16 7630 is big and exceptionally powerful. It’s a great option for gamers wanting a desktop replacement at a more affordable price. Best Prices Today: Dell G16 7630 Retailer Price $1900 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The Dell G16 7630 is big and has plenty of muscle to run your favorite games. Its display is exceptional, and it runs media with very smooth motion. It’s also priced to be affordable. But the gaming laptop’s sheer size means it’s not that portable. If you’re looking for a desktop experience but don’t want to shell out on an 18-inch laptop, then this ripper fits the bill exactly. Further reading: See our roundup of the best gaming laptops to learn about competing products. Dell G16 7630: Specifications There was only one unit that I could find available at the time of writing this review, and it shares my review unit’s specifications. They are as follows: CPU: Intel Core i9-13900HX RAM: 32GB / 4800MHz Graphics: RTX 4070 GPU Display: 16-inch 2560×1600 QHD+ LCD, 240Hz refresh rate, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 3ms response time, ComfortView Plus low blue light, Nvidia G-Sync Storage: 1TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 SSD Webcam: HD 720p camera with single arrange digital mic Connectivity: Thunderbolt 4 port, 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 2.1 port, RJ45 Ethernet port, 3.5mm audio jack Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 Battery capacity: 84WHrs Dimensions: 14.05 x 11.37 x 1.01 inches Weight: 6.59 pounds (2.99kg) Cost: $1,737 on Amazon Dell G16 7630: Design and build The Dell G16 7630 is unashamedly a laptop for gamers that like a large space to play on. Its generous dimensions measure 14.05 x 11.37 x 1.01 inches, so it has a desktop replacement feel to it. The chassis features an aluminum cover that makes it sturdier than if it were just made of plastic, but I did notice a bit of give there compared to laptops with solid CNC-milled aluminum chassis. The lid is similar, in that it will flex with firm pressure, but not with moderate pressure. The display is a sight to behold. It may be only 16 inches on the diagonal, but its16:10 aspect ratio means you benefit from extra vertical space than in the laptop’s forbears. It gives the illusion you’re using an even larger laptop. That’s helped along by very thin left and right bezels that make every inch of screen space a prize to savor. Playing games like Battlefield I and Cyberpunk 2077 was a real pleasure — my frame rates were high enough to stay competitive with the best players… The top and bottom bezels are a lot thicker than the sides, especially the bottom bezel which sits atop a tall hinge. That’s a fact I was very happy for, since it meant I could look almost straight on at the screen without having to crane my neck downwards. As to styling, the Dell G16 7630 eschews gamer-centric touches like RGB logos, or flashy Tron lights like the kind you’ll find in Alienware laptops, in favor of a simple Dell logo on the lid instead. I wasn’t unhappy about that since it meant the G16 7630 was one of those rare gaming laptops I could use in the office without anyone blinking an eye. At least that was the case when the laptop was fully charged. When it was time to charge it, the huge 330W power brick was kind of a giveaway — it’s probably the chunkiest and biggest charging brick I’ve seen. My review unit was a smart Nightshade Black color, which has a kind of charcoal hue. It also blended in nicely with my office environment. Dell G16 7630: Keyboard and trackpad The keyboard’s single-zone RGB backlighting was a brilliant blue color on startup, which was quite mesmerizing to see. The keyboard is full-sized and has a useful key layout for gamers, including full-sized arrow keys and a collection of media shortcuts down the right-hand side. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG The laptop also sports a Game Shift Key that lets you change and maximize the laptop’s fan speeds for heavy tasks. The ADSF keys are outlined by a white border, which gives the keyboard the battle station look many gamers like. Unsurprisingly for a laptop this size, the keys feel a bit mushy, but they fire off rapidly and with a satisfying low audible click. They are also nicely sized for my medium sized fingers — spacious but not trampoline-sized. One hitch is the trackpad’s smallness. It plays second fiddle to the G16 7630’s keyboard and could do with an extra half inch in each direction. Its clicks are nevertheless fast, and the trackpad tracks well, so it’s not a total loss. Dell G16 7630: Connectivity and audio A useful assortment of ports line the G16 7630’s flanks, allowing me to plug in my normal array of peripherals. There’s a Thunderbolt 4 port for transferring my essential game files at a quick speed of up to 40Gbps and an ethernet port for when I want the lowest latency in games. The laptop’s Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth functionality are also snappy — although, Wi-Fi 6 is rapidly becoming an older standard now, with laptops like the 2024 Razer Blade 16 now sporting the updated Wi-Fi 7 standard. The Dell G16 7630 is a large laptop and it projects sound really well in a large room. The laptop’s two speakers are well tuned for mid-tones, so you get a nice neutral sound in games. I only noticed slight vibrations at higher volumes. Dolby Atmos support gives the audio an appealing immersive quality. Dell G16 7630: Display and webcam I made a promise to myself when the 2024 Razer Blade 16 came out that I wouldn’t play games in 2650x1600p with anything less than a 240Hz refresh rate. Thankfully my Dell G16 7630 came with the same refresh rate and resolution combination, which made for really fast and smooth game action. Indeed, playing games like Battlefield I and Cyberpunk 2077 was a real pleasure — my frame rates were high enough to stay competitive with the best players. The screen resolution was also very detailed, but I’ve seen richer colors on OLED displays. Still, the Dell G16 7630’s 100 percent DCI-P3 color display produces a good enough picture to look bright and texture-rich. The laptop’s brightness was also never an issue. I measured a peak brightness of 497 nits, which I used to my advantage to keep the display visible in very bright rooms of my house. The 720p webcam impressed me less than the display. It’s adequate for chats and meetings, but some images came out looking a little orange at times. A single microphone array also didn’t do my voice much justice in game chats. The sound lost some detail at different moments, which made me sound a little robotic. Dell G16 7630: Gaming performance The Dell G16 7630 features a fast high-end Intel i9-13900HX processor made for gaming. It belongs to the Raptor Lake family, and sports 24 cores and 32 threads and a maximum turbo frequency of 5.4GHz. Compared to the older Alder Lake CPUs, this ripper has a more efficient P-Core microarchitecture and larger caches. It also supports faster DDR5 RAM (up to 5,600MHz), so it’s really designed to shred in games. To test its performance, I first ran the Cinebench Multi-Threaded benchmark. This test flexes all the CPU cores to give an indication of how well the processor fares when it’s really pushed to the maximum. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG My review laptop clocked a score of 10,658 in this test, which was quite decent; to be honest, though, there are now a bunch of laptops with 14th-generation Intel CPUs that will muscle out a score like this. But for an Intel 13th-generation CPU, the i9-13900HX is well up to the task of running your most demanding games. With plenty of thermal headroom in the hefty chassis, the laptop’s CPU also performed admirably in a bespoke test that uses the free HandBrake utility. The CPU managed to keep rising thermals at bay when tasked with encoding a 30GB MKV file to the MP4 format. It took just 828 seconds to finish. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Anything under 850 seconds is quick and snappy. It bodes very well for carrying out tasks that really tax the G16 7630 CPU, like video editing or encoding. You can be sure the G16 7630 won’t just chug along, it’ll keep processing effectively even if it gets hot. Moving on to the graphics performance tests, the 3DMark Time Spy 1.2 Overall test showed that Nvidia’s mid-range 4070 mobile CPU has a lot of muscle, placing third among its peers in our performance charts. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG In the Rise of the Tomb Raider gaming test, the Dell G16 7630 performed very respectably, placing just behind the Razer Blade 16 2024. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG The performance in the Shadow of the Tomb Raider gaming benchmark was even better. Here, the Dell G16 7630 toppled the field, opening up a can of whoop-ass on laptops like the Razer Blade 16 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG These scores suggest that the Dell 16 7630 can be expected to perform capably and produce smooth action to keep you competitive in games. The benchmarks reinforce what we already know about the RTX 4070 GPU, too — it’s a great video card that provides performance like Nvidia’s top-tier RTX 3080 GPUs. What’s more, if that last score is any indication, this laptop offers a few performance surprises against laptops with RTX 40 series GPUs too. Dell G16 7630: Battery performance To test the laptop’s battery life, I started by charging the review unit up to 100 percent. The volume was set to 50 percent and a cheap pair of headphones was plugged in to control sound. I also switched off the keyboard backlighting and the laptop’s Wi-Fi was switched to airplane mode. Finally, a 4K movie was set to run on repeat and the power cord was unplugged. Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG Dominic Bayley / IDG The G16 7630’s 84WHr battery ran for 5 hours and 35 mins. That’s the length of time you can expect a lightweight task like running a video to last on this laptop. For gaming, which uses more power, you can expect about half that time — so about 3 hours of battery life. That’s not great, but the laptop charges quickly when you plug it in. The only problem is the charging brick is so big you won’t want to take it with you when you leave your house. Should you buy the Dell G16 7630? The Dell G16 7630 is a seriously big laptop that really fills a niche market. For me that feels like gamers looking for a desktop replacement but who don’t want to shell out on a more expensive 18-inch gaming laptop. There’s a solid argument why you’d want that, too. The configuration I reviewed costs just $1,899, which is a lot cheaper than say, the Razer Blade 18, which has a starting price of $2,599. That makes it a particularly good buy if you can get by without a lot of portability. Gaming Laptops Read...

A round-up of previews of all the Super Rugby Pacific action this weekend, as well as soccer, rugby 7s, cricket and volleyball competition. Read...

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Brendan Kerry, who was an Australian flag bearer at the Beijing Winter Olympics, has been barred from US figure skating after an investigation led by the country’s peak sports abuse authority. Read...