We consider features, value, and honest pricing. It's important to learn more about their services - free plans, trial periods, refund periods - and we're also looking for companies that will maintain your privacy when you sign up. The official product page will never tell you everything you need to know, so please go to the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions pages to find out more.
We first used speedtest.net to measure the latency, upload and download speeds of a remote connection (usually Hong Kong to California), repeating the test immediately with the VPN turned off, and viewing all the changes. Next, a shorter connection (usually Hong Kong to Singpore) was run to see more typical peak performance, and some regular browsing tests (including streaming HD video) were run to look for other issues.
On the client and interface side, we were looking for a quality server selection tool (by country, region, server, speed) and plenty of configuration options.
In the end, we weighed these factors to come up with an overall ranking.