uVPN Review

uVPN is a premium professional looking VPN product, developed by a company in Hong Kong called “The Brocode Limited”. The company’s VPN is available for Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS, with extensions for Chrome and Firefox. The Google Play Store shows it with +50k downloads and an average rating of 3.4 stars. Their network is on the smaller side, with only 23 countries available from what we see. In this review, we are going to go through the ins and outs of uVPN to help you see if it is one you’ll want to use. Our major determining factors include pricing, privacy & security, ease of use, network size, speed, and streaming tests. Let’s jump right into it with pricing, first.

How Much is uVPN?

That depends on your term of service. One month is $8.99. That is a bit less than some of the bigger players in the community. If you decide to go with six months of service, the price drops to $5.83 a month. The best deal is the year of service for $3.74 a month. Interestingly, mobile users have the option of selecting one week for $2.99. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee (for the yearly plan) and a 7-day free trial. They do something interesting with their plans, depending on the term. All plans allow you 10 devices and high-speed servers.

However, the one-month membership (basic) provides you with access to only 10 countries, a 7-day money-back guarantee, 3 streaming country options, and ticket-based customer support. The six-month plan (optimal) allows access to 15 countries, ultra-fast servers, a 14-day guarantee, and 24/7 live chat support. Their yearly (premium) plan gives you access to all available countries.

Regrettably, they only accept credit cards or PayPal if you buy through the Windows version. However, you can set it up as a subscription through Google Pay and Apple Pay as well. We would love to see more options such as cryptocurrency or the ability to use gift cards.

About Brocode Limited

Speaking of security, let’s talk about the company. Unfortunately, there is not much information we can find about the company directly. We can tell you that they registered the website in 2019 and are based in Hong Kong. As far as privacy and security go, it is hard not to be confused about their policy. The company states on its website that they respect the user’s privacy. They also make it a point to say they do not keep activity or connection logs.

However, that seems to conflict with its privacy policy. They are pretty straightforward in that they automatically collect quite a bit of information on you. It is even more information if you provide it to them directly. As you see in the image below, they additionally say they store some data for seven years or longer, and they cooperate with law enforcement. Of course, you can read the full text in the link above, but these statements make us wary to use their product.

uVPN Usage and Features

To show everything, we’ll use the Android version of the VPN. As we mentioned, uVPN is straightforward. After installing it, you can choose the server by selecting it in the box at the top or by clicking the world icon. That will also allow you to access specific streaming server options. It does not have any advanced features to speak of, like split tunneling or a kill switch. However, it does allow you to choose between IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocols. Those are two of the best protocol options. By clicking on the gear, you can change the one you want to use. Both of them are secure options.

Is uVPN Fast?

While it is not as fast as some of the more prominent players in the market, we did get reasonably consistent speeds. For this example, we tested a server in New York. Our unprotected speed is 452 Mbps. In this image, you can see that we got a speed of 93.1 Mbps while connected to uVPN. That shows a 79% drop using the IKEv2 protocol. We obtained similar results in other cities. That is slower than some of the bigger players in the community, but we a weekly account. Allegedly, you get access to faster servers if you get a longer-term plan.

• Los Angeles – 86.6 Mbps
• Maidenhead, UK – 82.6 Mbps
• Amsterdam, Netherlands – 92 Mbps
• Sydney, Australia – 94.1 Mbps

Does uVPN Leak?

Despite having very few features and no specific DNS leak protection, we did not find any leaks. As far as the geo-location test goes, though, it shows us in Kansas instead of New York. If you are trying to get to the New York market, that could pose a problem.

How Well Does uVPN Unblock Streaming Services?

One of the draws of uVPN is the list of streaming options. Even though we mention 26 countries, they have specific streaming servers. Unfortunately, we did not have much luck when using the streaming options. As you can see in this image, we used their streaming server to try BBC iPlayer, but were stopped from viewing the content.

Additionally, we tested the generic servers in the UK from the main server page and did not have any luck with that, either. Even though we got Netflix to play while connected to the UK Netflix server, it was the American version. Again, they point out that they have special streaming servers, but we weren’t able to get Netflix or BBC iPlayer to work. You may have better luck than we did, but it failed both of our tests. To stream overseas content, we were out of luck.

Customer Service

Above, we mentioned that there are different levels of support, depending on how long your plan is. That said, they offer an FAQ, troubleshooting, and quick start guides. If you choose the one-month plan and need to use the email instead, their website says they try to answer all questions within five business days. If you wanted a quicker response, you would need to go with the longer term of service.

Conclusion

In our final words about uVPN, the service has some good points as well as several suggestions that we’ll make. We love the fact that it does not seem to leak, but we are surprised that the NYC server we chose shows us in Kansas. To be fair we have certainly seen this before though. Here are the other good points and some possible improvements. We suggest using the 7-day trial to see if the service is right for you.

Good Points

• Decent speeds
• Uses IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocols
• Easy to use interface
• Located outside 14 Eyes countries
• Reasonably priced
• Multiple platforms
• Up to 10 devices (with six months or yearly plan)

Suggestions

• Accept more payment methods
• Expand server network
• Clarify the privacy policy
• Resolve issues with streaming servers
• Add more features

The bottom line is that uVPN appears to be fine for protecting your privacy in terms of encryption, but their privacy policy makes us wary. We also would like to test the higher-end servers without needing to get six months or a year of service. Given all of those factors and the small network size, this is not be a VPN we would use. There are just so many options in the community.