Panda VPN review: obvious flaws but good value for money

Panda VPN has run its course and is not recommended.

Recently, some readers have feedback that Panda VPN can’t connect and customer service is unresponsive, so please don’t buy it first, and prioritize ExpressVPN, AstrillVPN, PrivateVPN, MullvadVPN and other alternatives, or you can also consider the airport solution. In order to avoid greater losses, users who have purchased Panda VPN should stop renewing it as soon as possible to see what happens when wall-flipping software runs away.

About three years ago, we began to recommend Panda VPN, because there was a time to go back to China to find ExpressVPN pumping a lot of friends recommended Panda VPN, found that the connection is much faster, the nodes do not fall off the line also supports Chinese, the tube and other video sites is rarely lagging, it can be said that that time to go back to the country, this VPN saved my life, otherwise it may not even be able to return to the school mail.

The purpose of writing this review is not to prove that Panda VPN can be used in China or not, this has no need to prove that many of my friends are using, some of them are still in the system of buddies (you heard right), from a purely tool point of view, there is no reason why I do not recommend Panda VPN, especially for the ordinary people of the country, just want to find a little more cost-effective tool for scientific Internet access, especially for the streaming applications have the requirements of this VPN should be something that you do not want to miss. This VPN should be one you don’t want to miss out on, with a large number of connectable high-speed nodes, there’s no other VPN you can compare it to.

But if you have particularly high privacy protection requirements for wall-flipping software, and you really want to be 100% invisible to the authorities’ censorship on the internet, I would not recommend you to use Panda VPN, and your best choice might still be ExpressVPN.In terms of privacy protection, I think Panda VPN still has some hard wounds, such as not supporting the Kill Switch article, which can easily cause accidental internet traffic. Traffic leakage, if you just go to Netflix to catch up on a show, there’s really nothing to worry about, but if you usually open a lot of sensitive URLs, it’s a pretty big risk.

So even though Panda VPN is one of the few VPNs available in China, there are a large number of users in the country, and as far as I know, there are not millions, but hundreds of thousands of them, and the official website of Panda VPN discloses that there are more than 48 million users in the world … The official website of Panda VPN discloses 48 million users worldwide. I myself because later ExpressVPN launched the Lightway protocol, basically not pumping, connection speed is almost a second to connect, I switched back to the Panda VPN frequency of use will be reduced, only on an iPad as a spare tire.

Benefits of Panda VPN

streaming media special line

The abbreviation in the line name is usually the name of the network service provider. For example: HKT, HKBN, APNIC, HKCM, PCCW, HiNet, Softban.

Or indicate support for a specific video platform, for example:

• AbemaTV: indicates that the line supports AbemaTV video playback
• Iplayer BBC: indicates that the line supports Iplayer BBC video playback
• Netflix: says line supports Netflix video playback
• Viaplay: indicates that the line supports Viaplay video playback
• VIU: indicates that the line supports VIU video playback

Or indicate a specific line, for example:

• Relay: Indicates that the line is a relay line, such as HK Relay, which is a relay from Hong Kong.
• BGP IPLC: indicates that the line is a network adaptive line

No other VPN on the market today offers such a great dedicated line for streaming! .

Free trial available, no payment tethering required

Panda VPN can be tried for free on mobile for a limited period of 3 days, and the official website found that you can try it for up to 7 days on iOS. The trial version has no limitations except for ads, and you don’t need to tie up any payments.

Android trial client is a little better, you can go directly to the official website to click on the free download (Download) button, select Android, and then click on the “free download” button (not Google Play), without having to install the Google family bucket can be used.

iOS client trouble, the official website click on the free download option iOS, at this time there are two now connected, one is from Apple’s official App Store to download packaged programs, domestic iPhone users should find a way to first use the U.S. App Store ID login, friends who know how to develop can also click on the “test package download! “, packaged and installed by yourself.

During the trial period, you can automatically generate a random ID on the client, so you don’t need to register by email. Good or bad, a trial will know, during the period of WIFI, 4G, 5G network environment can be measured, to determine the good use before renewing the subscription is not too late. Unfortunately, the free trial does not support desktop systems, so I hope it will be launched soon.

Full Chinese support

Panda VPN is probably the only VPN on the market with full Chinese language support, with language switching in the top right corner of the website, full Simplified Chinese support on the website, customer service that understands Chinese, and a client that supports full Chinese display.

useful and inexpensive

This is the price list for the Panda VPN:

	2-year package	1 year package	3-month package	1 month package
prices	$2.49/month	$3.99/month	$6.99/month	$9.99/month

You may find the wording of the official website price list is quite puzzling, what buy 6 months to send 6 months, buy 12 months to send 12 months, in fact, there is nothing to send or not to send, nothing more than to buy the longer the package, the lower the unit price per month, buy 12 months to send 12 months, that is, to buy 24 months, the price of $2.49 per month, the total price of 2 years of packages totaling $59.76 U.S. dollars, it’s as simple as that.

If you know the prices of other top tier VPNs, for example, ExpressVPN’s one year (15 months) subs cription is as low as $6+ per month, which is more than twice as much as PandaVPN’s. Purely from the price point of view, PandaVPN isn’t that expensive. But after all, at this price, PandaVPN supports 3 devices at the same time (ExpressVPN is 5), and it’s no match for ExpressVPN in terms of security and privacy protection.

Can be registered without email

Login to Panda VPN does not require email registration, you can directly in the client or the website directly automatically generated a random account ID (generated after you remember lest you forget), although this has a little effect on privacy protection, but only in the trial period is more meaningful, because the paid version of the payment you use the same means of payment to expose your identity, unless using Bitcoin, but this means of payment support From time to time.

No mailbox registration on the convenience of the promotion than the significance of privacy protection, if you decide to use the mailbox registration, remember to try not to use the domestic mailbox, with foreign mailboxes to check the VPN update notification and other emails in the heart of the less a burden.

Split Tunneling

The Panda VPN client supports Split Tunneling, which means you can set it up so that domestic websites don’t go through the VPN and foreign websites go through the VPN, which is a must-have feature for surfing the Internet over the wall in China. You can configure each application manually, or you can use the two modes provided by Panda VPN: Smart Mode and Global Mode.

In smart mode, Panda VPN will determine which traffic should go through the VPN and which should not, this recognition rate is highly accurate for known walled websites, but not for some other foreign websites; in global mode, all traffic goes through Panda VPN, which may result in some domestic websites not being able to open or opening slower.

Disadvantages of Panda VPN

Team Background and Rumors

There are rumors online that Panda VPN is from a domestic company that claims Panda VPN is a phishing VPN.I can’t confirm or disprove such rumors, just as there are also rumors online that ExpressVPN is a company with a Chinese background.

I just think, assuming that “phishing” is real, then in order to get the maximum effect of phishing, China should turn a blind eye to Panda VPN’s mirror sites, the fact is that these sites are being driven to extinction; and in order to achieve the maximum effect of a phishing VPN, it should be developed for it to be most convenient for mainland netizens to pay channels: Alipay and WeChat, but no; if the tool itself has a political purpose, it should be more or less like Freedomgate, which usually tries to instill some political news. WeChat, but no; and if the tool itself has a political purpose, it should more or less try to feed you some kind of political news or something on a regular basis, like Freedomgate does, and it doesn’t seem to.

But anyway, this is one reason why many people have decided not to touch Panda VPN, and I can understand that, as I said at the beginning of the article, it’s still up to you to decide if you want to use it or not. But as far as I know, Panda VPN has at least hundreds of thousands of users in China, and from what I can find online, there’s no talk of being taken care of by the public security because of using Panda VPN, and so far, there doesn’t seem to be any.

My domestic friends who work in the system also use Panda VPN, a lot of people are using it, just no one will talk about this, this is a VPN company that wants to make money, the team is indeed Chinese, registered in the Seychelles, the team is likely to be in foreign countries, is not the Chinese team to do the VPN is bound to be unavailable, or please readers to judge for themselves.

Unendorsed “zero log” commitment

Officially, it claims zero logs, but unlike Tier 1 ExpressVPN, it’s audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers for peace of mind. Because your Internet traffic through the VPN, theoretically, the manufacturer can record and retain all the data they want to record, whether it is to face the government censorship or hacking (sometimes even VPN manufacturers directly sell your data), the data may fall into the hands of a third party, for each VPN user, will be a huge privacy and security risks, just a “zero-log” commitment is not enough, there are many such VPNs, the reality is that there are not many of them. The promise of “zero logs” is far from enough. There are many VPNs out there, but the reality is that not many of them have the courage to do a 3-way audit. Panda VPN has been in operation for many years, but it still hasn’t done it yet, which is inevitably a cause for concern.

Router not supported

Panda VPN doesn’t support routers, it’s destined to be just a personal VPN, it can’t do a low-cost whole-house wall flipping for home or office, and also, it only supports 3 simultaneous devices connecting to one account, to get more devices, you’ll have to add money for a customized number of devices, the good thing is that the price isn’t particularly exorbitant, on average, it’s roughly $0.83 a month for each additional device, $10 a year.

There’s no Kill Switch.

This actually worries me, and is the main reason I downgraded it to a spare tire, because no VPN in China can stay connected all the time without disconnecting and reconnecting once, so not letting the device’s network traffic leak out during the short period of time between disconnections and reconnections is an important part of privacy protection, but Panda VPN doesn’t have this feature, and all the major VPNs have it.

If you just that it to watch a drama, the impact is not big, but if you intend to visit some foreign sensitive sites in the country while the night, I advise you not to use it, because one or two disconnect and reconnect can completely betray you, will be asked to drink tea is just a matter of probability, but if you use ExpressVPN will not be, connected to the VPN no data leakage, disconnect and reconnect will not be leaked, you are personally more secure.

Panda VPN Download

You may find a VPN with the same name online, if the link doesn’t point to pandavpn.pro it should be an impostor or coincidence, make sure to download Panda VPN from the official website portal, the supported clients include: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, Android TV, etc. The Windows client supports systems with Win7 version or above, MacOS supports systems with 10.12 or above, iOS supports systems with 11 or above, Android (including Android TV) supports systems with 5.0 or above, and Ubuntu LTS supports systems with 16.04 or above. The Windows client supports Win7 or above, MacOS supports 10.12 or above, iOS supports 11 or above, Android (including Android TV) supports 5.0 or above, and Ubuntu LTS supports 16.04 or above. Except for iOS, the installation package can be downloaded directly from the official website. iOS needs to be downloaded from the App Store in the U.S. Area, and technically savvy customers can also download the beta version of the iOS installation package from the Chinese version of the official website of Panda VPN, and compile and install the package by themselves in the development tool.

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