CyberGhost 6

CyberGhost Pro Overview

CyberGhost Pro is the brand new service from a Romanian-based provider that originally launched in 2011. This upgraded version of the original Cyberghost, well-known for its free but very restricted edition, offers a turbo-charged take on an already innovative and interesting approach to the VPN experience. The execution isn’t always perfect but for users wanting speed as well as privacy, it’s a great option thanks to its zero logs policy and a whole raft of privacy extras.

Speed and performance have recently gone through the roof to catapult Cyberghost Pro into the top tier of high-performance VPNs. The server network may be limited with only 29 countries but with 800+ servers available, congestion is rarely an issue. Customer support is reasonable with excellent resources on the well-designed CyberGhost website.

CyberGhost Pro comes with some interesting extras, such as ad-blocking and anti-malware. We also really like the free proxy service offered on the website, which is a great way to get a taste of masking your IP address.

Privacy

CyberGhost Pro is an excellent choice for privacy fans. The zero logs policy is the perfect cornerstone of the experience, which mitigates the fact that its falls under EU jurisdiction. We are big fans of the killswitch to protect you from dropouts and the option to force traffic through their first-party DNS servers.We also love that you don’t need an email address to sign up or need to provide any personal details. CyberGhost Pro does a great job of explaining their approach in their clearly written privacy policy. We aren’t quite buying their claims of military-grade encryption as it looks like standard AES-256 to us but that’s more than good enough. We are also big fans of the additional ad blocking and anti-tracking measures that can be switched on when you need them.
Our only gripe really is that torrenting is only allowed on specific servers, which given the limited choice to start with is a bit annoying.

Speed & Performance

Cyberghost Pro has clearly invested in its server network: our latest test results reveal an incredible surge in speeds. European server results are so absolutely outrageous, we had to re-test those locations to make sure there was no error. We actually saw better speeds with CyberGhost Pro enabled than without, almost double. With speeds nearing 170Mbps, you can download multiple huge files, stream HD video and even level up on your favorite multiplayer game, all without breaking a sweat.UK and US servers delivered “only” 70Mbps down, putting most VPN rivals to shame and will chew through any heavy duty activity you throw at them. The only weak results were Hong Kong and Canada. The good news is that despite the distance, Australia performed well, suggesting proximity isn’t a big issue.
Less welcome news was that Canada suffered a 50% drop compared to previous tests while at 75% capacity, suggesting that server congestion may occasionally impact speeds. We will continue to monitor this issue.Manual server selection is crucial. Automatic selection resulted is significantly worse performance and sometimes much higher latency. For the highest speeds, you will also need to turn off any extra features.

Locations

The good news is Cyberghost Pro gives you city-level server choices on a good number of its server locations, which is great for anyone looking to really optimise performance.The number of countries is quite limited however and very much at the lower end of the market. There are some quite big holes with no Central or South American options whatsoever. Africa is a similar gap while Asia is limited to Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Check out our full list below to ensure your needs are covered but Cyberghost Pro is really aimed at people looking for European, North American and Australian locations.

Server locations

Most popular locations

Ease of use

CyberGhost Pro takes an innovative approach to its apps. It aims to optimise your experience by asking you want you want to do then customising the app accordingly. Want to simply browse privately? Then you’ll be presented with a series of additional privacy features to toggle on or off. Want to stream? You’ll see a list of streaming services that you can click to not just connect to the best server but also launch the service, all with a single click. Of course you can also just select your own server in a more typical fashion.

We really like this approach but the only problem is that it adds another layer to an already rather bloated app. There’s just far too many random graphics, animations and blobs of unnecessary text for our liking. The whole experience is rather garish and in rather a big window that dominates the screen. It’s also a bit laggy.

For everything we really like, such as the excellent search filters and well-organised settings, there’s peculiarities like cities only being selectable from search results for the relevant country (nowhere is this explained). So it’s a mixed bag but we give CyberGhost Pro an A+ for imagination and effort but a lower grade for execution. We also experienced three crashes in a couple of hours testing.

Cyberghost Pro doesn’t offer dedicated mobile apps yet but you can use your details to access the original Cyberghost apps, which fortunately perform very well.