After conducting 3 days of testing over the Thaipusam long weekend, I have pulled the trigger and subscribed for the 3 years package. The following is a rather lengthy review so please bear with me.
Purpose of obtaining VPN: Viewing Netflix in the US region, security is bonus. If you didn't know, USA has the highest number of series and movies listing. By comparison, Malaysia only have 11.08% of USA listing. Please do Google and verify.
Method of use: Setup in my Asus RT-AC68U router for full home coverage. I specifically bought this router because it is one of the very few affordable gateway router with built-in VPN client. I also verified with a couple of VPN providers to ensure that this a supported model.
My Setup: unifi Advance 30Mbps Bonanza package, downgraded from Advance 50Mbps. I got fed-up of waiting for the turbo upgrade after 6 months of notice. TM has bundled the HyppTV Premium into the unifi line so what was added as a top-up of RM50 per month cannot be removed anymore. Because it's a New Sign-up promotion, I cannot switch my previous line so I had to go through the painful exercise of terminating my old line and subscribe for a new one... but that will be another long story.
Journey of my Trial:
1) While doing my research on Netflix via VPN, I came across this forum posting and I'm glad I did. KKTech is very responsive and gave me all the answers I was seeking. PLUS POINT: 10% cheaper than buying direct from NordVPN and I can pay using Boost, which gave me RM8 angpow plus RM3 cashback (2%)!
2) NordVPN Support Page has step-by-step guides for all the supported gateway/router. Followed accordingly and got my Asus RT-AC68U configured in a single attempt.
3) BW via NordVPN is approximately 20% of the line speed. Line speed will get 21-25Mbps vs 4-5Mbps after enabling VPN, using Netflix speed test at fast.com. This is KL Server vs USA Server.
4) Browser on my windows desktop successfully show USA titles. Example: All Pokemon Series are displayed. Clicking on Blade of the Immortal will have an error "Not available at your region (US)".
5) Testing on my Mi TV box gave an error "using unblocker or proxy. please turn off to continue". I then found out that specific US servers will bypass this error. Reconfigured my Asus and we're in business.
6) Testing on my Samsung phone gave the same error as Mi TV box, which was fixed with the new US server config.
7) While watching The Seven Deadly Sins (US) on my Samsung, the Unblocker detection kicked in while it was changing to the 4th episode. Contacted NordVPN Helpdesk and they gave immediate suggestions that resolved the issue. Needed to manually configure DNS server on my mobile. Their Helpdesk Support is excellent (used it twice) and live up to their Award winning status.
8) To use NordVPN on my Samsung, they have an Android app. However, I need to link to a specific US server so OpenVPN client was suggested by NordVPN support page. Installed that and tested Netflix over Celcom 4G and Time fixed line without issues.
9) I discovered that my Mi Home Controller will be disconnected when the VPN is running on my Asus gateway/router. To rectify this issue, I will need to setup another router for VPN access only but since NordVPN allow 6 concurrent clients, I decided to use OpenVPN on my mobile and TV box instead.
10) KKTech online store was straight forward and to the point. Transaction was completed in 5min and my NordVPN account was updated with the license code.
Now, I am just wondering when I will get my unifi turbo to 300Mbps...
Thanks for ur feedback. This is top quality feedback with great detailed.
I guess the bandwidth issue is nordvpn need to serve many peoples all over the world to watch Netflix and not many servers available due to Netflix continuously band vpn. However, we have to agree that nordvpn is one of the few vpn supplier who can still manage to work with Netflix.
For those who use shared account, u will get constantly kick out from the server if another people connect to same server to watch Netflix with same account. Get a genuine account can save u a lot of time.
On top of this , we have to highlight that the low bandwidth is on Netflix server only. If u use Singapore server, the speed can go up to 80% of bandwidth and limitation is on hardware decryption speed especially router which have low processing power.
Thanks RAV4 and I think many people will find it very useful when select VPN services.
U made my day bro, thanks.