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WTFast - Full Review
Whether you’re security-conscious and want to keep your details safe from the attention of criminals or you work abroad and want to be able to get around geo-restrictions to stream content from your home country, there are numerous reasons why a VPN (virtual private network) could be useful for you.
While most VPNs sell themselves on the privacy they can offer, WTFast takes a different approach by targeting the gaming community. The service markets itself not as a VPN but a ‘GPN’ – a gamers private network – and promises to offer a smoother gaming experience. With that in mind, we tested it out to see whether it lives up to the hype.
Speed
A traditional VPN protects your online activity by routing all your web traffic through their servers – and while this does an excellent job of hiding your information, it does usually lead to a noticeable reduction in your internet speed.
WTFast doesn’t work in quite the same way: put simply, it doesn’t route your traffic via different servers. Of course, this means that it doesn’t offer the anonymity of most VPNs, but one positive effect of this is that it doesn’t affect your general internet speed. The service does claim to offer faster and more reliable connections for online gaming; for more details on this see the gaming section below.
Servers
Compared to many other VPNs around, the server base of WTFast review is fairly small. The service provides around 230 servers – dwarfed by the thousands offered by market leaders NordVPN and Cyberghost – although this does cover 48 different countries.
Again, though, it is difficult to judge WTFast on the metrics of a typical VPN, because it has a much narrower scope. The key purpose of WTFast is to provide quick, reliable connects for online gaming, and it succeeds exceptionally well in this regard.
Features
If you’ve discovered WTFast while looking for a VPN that prioritises gaming, you may be disappointed – in terms of security, this product offers very little compared to most other VPNs on the market. Because WTFast doesn’t re-route your internet connection via other servers, it doesn’t protect your online activity in the same way other VPNs do.
As mentioned above, WTFast has a very specific purpose; to provide the optimal gaming experience. It has a number of excellent features designed to achieve this goal. The software learns from your activity over an extended period of time in order to find the best and most reliable path, reducing your ping and ensuring you shouldn’t lose connection often.
One additional thing to consider is the issue of simultaneous connections; while many VPNs allow you to connect multiple devices at once, WTFast does not. This means that if you live in a household with numerous gamers who want to use the service, they will all need to purchase their own account.
Streaming
One of the major plus points of a VPN is their ability to bypass geo-blocking software, which is designed to limit access to content to specific regions. This can be frustrating if you travel abroad regularly or if you like to view content libraries outside of your own region – but many VPNs allow you to get around these restrictions by routing your connection through a server in the same region as the content you wish to view.
Unfortunately, once again this is not a service that WTFast can provide. As this product does not re-route your traffic at all, it is unable to bypass geo-restrictions – if this is a key feature for you, then there are many VPNs around that will be more suited to your needs.
Torrenting
Reliable, secure torrenting requires excellent data encryption, with many ISPs now blocking torrenting software and websites automatically, and most VPNs allow you to bypass these restrictions quickly and easily.
Again, as WTFast does not re-route your connection through other servers to mask your identity, it does not offer the ability to use torrenting or other file-sharing software.
Gaming
While there are numerous features offered by most VPNs that WTFast does not provide, it excels at what it does offer: during testing, our gaming experience was significantly better when we connected via the service than without it. Online gaming is notoriously inconsistent, with many people noticing bad ping or lag during their playing time. This can be very frustrating, but WTFast had an immediate impact during testing.
Ping (or latency) is the term used to describe the time taken between a signal being sent by a host and received back from the recipient. The higher ping you have, the more likely you are to experience lag during gameplay – and with WTFast connected, our ping dropped from around 300ms to less than 60ms, ensuring a much smoother, more reliable gaming experience.
Subscription Plans
WTFast is cheaper than most VPNs, but this reflects the limited nature of the product. The monthly cost is $9.99, but this can drop to as little as $8.33 per month if you sign up to the year long plan.
Free Trial
WTFast currently offers a free trial that lasts seven days. To obtain the free trial, you need to sign up to one of the paid subscription plans (from one month to twelve months) – the first week is free, and you can cancel your plan before the paid subscription begins.
FAQ
What is WTFast?
WTFast is not a VPN in the traditional sense – it is a GPN or ‘gamers private network’, designed specifically to offer a smoother gaming experience with less lag.
How does WTFast work?
This service works by providing stable, fast paths from your device to the game server rather than the normal server routes that may be slow or busy, therefore limiting the amount of latency you experience.
How much does WTFast cost?
WTFast offers a number of subscription plans, starting at $9.99 per month but available for as little as $8.33 per month if you take out a year-long plan.
Can I access WTFast for free?
WTFast is a paid product and does not offer a free version. However, the company does provide a free 7-day trial for you to test the product out.
Verdict
WTFast is very good at what it does – it claims to offer a superior gaming experience, and it succeeds. However, it is important to know that it is not a traditional VPN. It doesn’t offer any security, doesn’t allow you to bypass geo-blocking software and doesn’t allow access to torrenting software.
If you are looking for a VPN purely for its ability to make your online gaming connections more stable, then WTFast is highly recommended. If you have additional requirements, there are many superior VPNs to choose from.
