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Rarely does a set of open-fit earbuds actually impress me. I tend to find them underwhelming because overall sound quality is subpar compared to the more traditional in-ear models. Any promise of noise reduction, or a far-fetched claim of noise cancellation, usually doesnt hold true. The first time I used the Shokz OpenFit Pro ($249.95) I was immediately met with better audio performance than Id just experienced on Sonys new LinkBuds Clip and noise reduction technology that actually lessened some distractions. These arent the perfect set of open earbuds, but they have a lot more to offer than most of the competition. Design Shokz has a number of over-the-ear hook earbud designs under its belt, and they all carry the OpenFit name. That is also an apt description of these products since they all sit outside of your ear canal, which inherently allows you to remain aware of your surroundings. The company currently offers the OpenFit 2 and 2+ in addition to the OpenFit Air, at prices ranging from $120 to $200. The OpenFit Pro looks similar to its predecessors, albeit with a slightly smaller main housing and more pops of silver. Those ear hooks have a titanium wire inside and are wrapped in ultra-soft silicone. Theyre plenty flexible and provide a secure yet comfortable fit for daily wear and workouts. Both earbuds of the OpenFit Pro have tiny physical controls for media playback, volume adjustments, calls and noise settings. The various actions are customizable through the Shokz app. During several weeks of testing, these buttons responded quickly to my clicks and using them didnt cause the OpenFit Pro to shift out of place. The OpenFit Pro comes with a charging case that's larger than most other earbuds, which is understandable since Shokz had to accommodate that ear hook. However, the case is quite flat, so it doesnt take up too much room and easily fits in a small pocket. Theres a USB-C port around back for charging and a Bluetooth pairing button inside. The case also supports wireless charging, if your charging pad is large enough. Noise reduction vs. noise cancellation The OpenFit Pro is the first set of Shokz earbuds with what the company calls Open-Ear Noise Reduction. This is essentially the companys take on active noise cancellation (ANC), but its designed to be effective with earbuds that dont enter your ear canals. Since your ears aren't completely sealed off from the noise of the outside world, Shokz is limited in just how much sound it can reduce. But Im happy to report the companys microphone and algorithm combo is actually quite effective. Shokz says its noise reduction works best in moderately loud environments, like offices and cafes. Ive found the OpenFit Pro does well to reduce the distraction of constant noise sources like HVAC systems, fans and white noise machines. The earbuds completely silenced a particularly raucous HVAC fan in my hotel room during CES. It's not the most effective at cutting down environmental noise, but in exchange you get a more comfortable set of earbuds while also remaining somewhat alert and aware of your surroundings Other OpenFit Pro features The rectangular housings of the OpenFit Pro hold larger drivers Billy Steele for Engadget The OpenFit Pro is Shokz most premium set of earbuds, so the features dont end at noise reduction. Head tracking, customizable EQ, multipoint pairing, find my earbuds and wear detection are also available here. The companys app displays battery percentages for each earbud and the case right at the top of the main screen with access to the rest of its tools just below. You dont have to go searching and tapping through menus until youve found what youre looking for. As someone who has to contend with a lot of headphone apps, I appreciate when all of the options are quickly available from the home screen. Like other companies offer on their open-type earbuds, Shokz has given the EQ settings a few presets specifically designed for the open nature of the product. Those include a Vocal option that boosts mids for audiobooks or calls and a Private mode that reduces high frequency sounds to prevent leakage. I usually kept the OpenFit Pro around 70 percent volume, which is loud enough that a nearby neighbor in a quiet room could hear the muffled rage of Incendiarys Echo of Nothing. Another audio feature thats worth mentioning is Dolby Atmos support. More specifically, the OpenFit Pro is optimized for Dolby Atmos, thanks in part to the aforementioned Dolby Head Tracking. You can disable the enhanced audio and head tracking individually in the Shokz app, but I found leaving Atmos on all the time, even when I wasnt listening to Dolby Atmos music, gave the earbuds a more immersive, more detailed sound profile. Sound quality and calls Overall sound quality is another area where the OpenFit Pro shines. Many open-design earbuds struggle to manage much bass or detailed highs, both of which Shokz has addressed with its driver design. Dual 11x20mm diaphragms power a larger, rectangular driver thats the equivalent of a 16.7mm round driver ina normal set of earbuds. For comparison, most in-ear models typically use 10-12mm drivers, with smaller designs housing 6-8mm units. Shokz says it tuned the OpenFit Pro with what it calls OpenBass 2.0 and DirectPitch 3.0, features that provide better bass performance and audio thats beamed more directly into your ears. All of that combines for some truly impressive audio performance in a set of open earbuds. The OpenFit Pro still doesnt muster the bombastic bass that earbuds like the WF-1000XM5 offer, but the low-end performance here is greatly improved over other open models like the LinkBuds Clip. While Thrices Silhouette still has enough driving kick drum, bass guitar and riffs to do the track justice, there isnt as deep of a growl as the song has on flagship options from Bose, Sony and Sennheiser. The OpenFit Pro case is large, but it's not overly bulky Billy Steele for Engadget Theres also more clarity and detail in the tuning here than on other open models, which is on full display when listening to albums like Wet Legs alternative masterpiece moisturizer. I love how I can hear the texture of the guitars and drums, and even the vocals, which are the kind of subtle details open earbuds typically lack. I should also mention that overall sound quality will depend on how the OpenFit Pro sits on your ears. I can easily improve the bass tone if I slightly push the earbuds in closer to my ear canals, but all of the observations I just made were with the earbuds in their natural resting position. Shokz says the three-microphone setup that assists with its noise reduction tech also helps with calls. That configuration, combined with AI-powered voice recognition, should be able to block over 99 percent of background noise and deliver sharper vocal clarity overall. While that first part holds true the OpenFit Pro does a great job canceling any ambient roar the overall voice quality here is below average. It will certainly work for casual chats, but I wouldnt recommend it for regular work calls or any scenario where you might need to record what youre saying. My voice sounded muffled during calls and voice memos, more like I would over speakerphone than a set of carefully tuned earbuds. OpenFit Pro battery life Shokz promises up to 12 hours of battery life on the OpenFit Pro with up to 50 hours of total use when you factor in the charging case. Thats with noise reduction disabled though; you can expect up to six hours with that turned on (24 hours total with the case). During weeks of testing, I never encountered any issues hitting those figures and the OpenFit Pro never struggled to get through a full work day of music, podcasts and calls using a combination of the default Open Mode and Noise Reduction mode. As I mentioned, the charging case can be topped up wirelessly if you have a compatible accessory thats large enough. And if you find yourself with a pair of completely dead earbuds, Shokz includes a quick-charge feature that gives you up to four hours of use in 10 minutes. The competition The OpenFit Pro earbuds sitting in their charging case Billy Steele for Engadget If youre looking for something that closely resembles the design of the OpenFit Pro, Shokz other OpenFit models are likely your best alternatives. The $200 OpenFit 2+ offers 11 hours of battery life and Dolby Audio with both physical buttons and touch controls. The most affordable option, the OpenFit Air ($120), lasts up to six hours on a charge but doesnt have enhanced audio or wireless charging. As you step down from the OpenFit Pro, youre missing out on noise reduction, Dolby Atmos and longer battery life. JBL will soon have three models of its own to rival the Shokz OpenFit line. The Soundgear Sense is currently available for $165 and the Sense Pro and Sense Lite are coming in March for $200 and $150, respectively. These all have a variety of seemingly handy features, but none of them offer any kind of noise reduction and they all have shorter battery life than the OpenFit Pro and OpenFit 2+. I also cannot vouch for them as I havent tested any of JBLs open designs yet. Wrap-up Shokz has achieved a rare feat. The company managed to build a set of open-fit earbuds that retain all of those inherent benefits while also providing some relief from distractions with noise reduction. No, the over-the-ear hook design isnt for everyone especially if you wear glasses but the comfy, secure fit and IP55 rating make these a great choice for workouts. The OpenFit Pro is also good enough to be your all-around set of earbuds, and that noise reduction can be beneficial in the office or your favorite work from home space. Sound quality is better than youll find on most open earbuds as well, but youll probably enjoy not having anyting crammed into your ears most. And you dont have to make too many sacrifices here for that satisfaction. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/shokz-openfit-pro-review-reducing-distractions-while-keeping-your-ears-open-130000443.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Amazon has confirmed that its letting go of 16,000 workers and employees across its organization. In an announcement by company SVP Beth Galetti, she explained that Amazon was going through organizational changes to reduce layers and remove bureaucracy. Affected employees in the US will be given 90 days to look for another internal role and will receive severance pay if they do not find any. Galetti also said that Amazon doesnt have plans to announce broad reductions every few months but admitted that the company could make adjustments as appropriate.News about the layoffs was leaked in an email mistakenly sent out early to workers, along with a calendar invitation for a meeting dubbed internally as Project Dawn. In the email seen by Bloomberg and the BBC, Amazon Web Services Senior Vice President Colleen Aubrey told workers that their impacted colleagues from the US, Canada and Costa Rica had already been notified. Changes like this are hard on everyone. These decisions are difficult and made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success, Aubrey reportedly wrote in the email. Amazon eliminated 14,000 roles back in October 2025 across its games, logistics, payment and cloud computing divisions, with the availability of AI technologies being one of the main reasons for the layoffs. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology weve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before, Amazon said in its announcement back then. This new round of layoffs is just a continuation of the previous one, as Amazon was reportedly looking to let 30,000 people go from the start. The announcement comes shortly after Amazon revealed that it was shutting down its remaining Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores and will focus on grocery deliveries instead. To note, Amazons year-over-year net sales grew by 13 percent in the third quarter of 2025 alone. Its net income increased to $21.2 billion compared to the $15.3 billion it posted in the third quarter of 2024. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazons-latest-round-of-layoffs-will-affect-16000-workers-120000702.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Windscribe is a virtual private network (VPN) with intense "How do you do, fellow kids?" energy. It has servers in 69 countries and an annual plan that costs $69, an obsession with the sex number that rivals Elon Musk's. I'm shocked that it doesn't have a subscription costing $4.20 per month. But there's another side to Windscribe's cringe: an obsession with independence and a Bernie Sanders-like anger on behalf of an exploited public. In a market where the best VPNs aim for professionalism, Windscribe aspires to be punk. Its iconoclasm may have led it to develop an app that looks like ExpressVPN in a trash compactor, but it also spurred Windscribe to offer a strong free plan and forgo financial relationships with VPN reviewers. That attitude earned it a spot on my list of the best free VPNs. Although Windscribe's heart is in the right place, my job is to figure out whether that translates into a good product. I used our rigorous VPN testing procedure to rate Windscribe in 11 categories. You can find my results in the table below and a final verdict at the end of the review. Editor's note (1/27/26): We've overhauled our VPN coverage to provide more detailed, actionable buying advice. Going forward, we'll continue to update both our best VPN list and individual reviews (like this one) as circumstances change. Most recently, we added official scores to all of our VPN reviews. Check out how we test VPNs to learn more about the new standards we're using. Findings at a glance Category Notes Installation and UI Installation and setup are always straightforwardApps look very similar on Windows, macOS, iOS and AndroidApp design is overly compact and often impenetrable, but hides a solid programBrowser extensions allow one-click bypassing of security features on the current page, much like common ad blockers Speed Average latency below 300 worldwideSome slowdown in download and upload speeds, but not severeSpeeds were highly consistent everywhere except some African servers Security Six solid protocols WireGuard, IKEv2, and four based on OpenVPNMost protocols available on all platforms, except IKEv2 on AndroidNo leaks detected, even while switching serversPackets are encrypted as expected Pricing $9 per month, $69 for one year ($5.75 per month)Custom plans cost $1 per country plus $1 for unlimited data; must spend at least $3Static IPs available for $2 per month or $8 per month for a residential addressFree plan gives you 10 locations and 10GB per month with a confirmed email Bundles Shares coupon codes for various discounts on five "partners in privacy" Privacy policy Retains very little information, none of it personally identifiableCan make an account without an email addressAll apps have been audited by independent overseersFought Greek court case in 2025 because it had no logs to turn over Virtual location change 15 different servers in five locations unblocked NetflixContent changed each time, suggesting the destination site was completely fooled Server network 193 server locations in 122 cities across 71 countriesOnly two virtual server locations in the entire networkReal servers in Russia and India risk abrupt shutdowns Features Standout extras include the customizable R.O.B.E.R.T blocker and split tunneling on Windows, Mac and AndroidNetwork Options offers lots of automation choices, but terminology makes it needlessly confusingIncludes obfuscation to get online in restrictive regionsFirewall is a stronger version of a kill switch, preventing any access unless the VPN is connected Customer support Knowledgebase search bar is good at finding articles, and articles themselves are usefulGarry AI chatbot is helpful, but pushed way too hard at the expense of access to human agentsActive Reddit and Discord communities for peer-to-peer help Background check Founded in Canada in 2016No significant controversies in 10 yearsCanada is a Five Eyes nation, but this shouldn't matter if Windscribe is keeping to its no logs policy Installing, configuring and using Windscribe The first step is always to figure out how easy or hard the VPN is to use. Windscribe and other VPNs are important tools, but you'll never use them if the UI gets in the way. I tested Windscribe's desktop apps on Windows and Mac, its mobile apps on iOS and Android and its Chrome and Firefox browser extensions. To start with, let me say that installing Windscribe is a breeze no matter where you do it. The downloaders and installers handle their own business, only requiring you to grant a few permissions. The apps arrive on your system ready to use out of the box. Windows The first thing you'll notice about Windscribe is that it's not even slightly interested in looking like any other VPN. It crams everything into an extremely compact window, which has some advantages mainly that it's easy to operate it while looking at another app. On the downside, well, it looks like this. Windscribe's UI on a Windows laptop. Sam Chapman for Engadget The Windscribe team will probably just say that I'm brainwashed by the establishment, but there's a good reason that most VPNs choose designs with a little more space. This fiddly console, most of which is taken up by information you can't interact with, is likely to confirm all a newcomer's worst fears about using a VPN. Private Internet Access had a similar problem of tightening its app design to the point of being incomprehensible. The problems persist when you get to the settings page. It's easy to make sense of a VPN without technical knowledge, but Windscribe's preferences menu does everything it can to obscure that truth. Highly technical features are mixed in with options for casual users, and the explanatory blurbs usually cloud the issue even further. Even the "Look & Feel" settings somehow manage to be confusing. What is the difference between the Stretch, Fill and Tile modes for aspect ratio? What the heck is a Bundled background, and what does it matter whether it's Square, Palm, Ripple, Drip or Snow? The answers to all these can be found by playing around or looking in the knowledgebase, but a VPN really shouldn't require that for its most basic toggles. Once you get used to Windscribe and learn where to find the features that actually matter, it runs quite smoothly. Connections are never delayed and there are none of the random error messages that have dogged me on other VPNs. In a world of VPNs that look great but run clunkily, Windscribe has built one that looks terrible but runs great. I can't complain about how well it works, but is it too much to ask for a provider that does both? (Oh, wait, that's Proton VPN.) Mac Windscribe's macOS app is almost identical to its Windows app. That deserves praise in itself you'll get much the same experience no matter which type of computer you use. But it also means the Mac app shares the same problems. Windscribe's app for Mac desktops and laptops. Sam Chapman for Engadget There's the same overly compact design cluttered with too much information. The same technobabble-filled options menu. And the same fundamental solidity underlying it all: a VPN that does the job beautifully but has no interest in being accessible. It would be a mistake to write Windscribe off because of its app design, but it's important to know what you'll have to work through. Android One thing I can't fault Windscribe for is a lack of consistency. The Android app looks a lot like the Windows and Mac apps, only lightly adapted for the mobile format. On these devices, the design decisions make more sense the UI writing is still impenetrable for casual users, but the compact pages look a lot more normal on a phone screen. A comparison of Windscribe's extremely similar apps on Android and Mac. Sam Chapman for Engadget iOS There's not a lot to say about Windscribe on iOS that I haven't already said about the other three main platforms. Looking over all my screenshots, it seems fairly clear that Windscribe's problems much like PIA's come from starting on mobile and trying to make that same design work on desktop. It's still not great to look at, but I can at least see where they're coming from. Windscribe's iOS app. Sam Chapman for Engadget Browser extensions Windscribe's extensions for Chrome and Firefox look a little like its desktop and mobile VPN apps, but they act a little differently. They serve the same basic purpose as the standalone apps changing your IP address and location but they're also customizable ad blockers for the web page you're currently on. Windscribe's Google Chrome extension. Sam Chapman for Engadget For example, in the image above, I can control what location Google perceives me to be in. But I can also control what gets blocked by choosing to let Google bypass certain features. Clicking the leftmost button makes the current website skip the VPN tunnel. The central button shuts off the ad blocker and the right-hand button shuts off the features on the Privacy section of the preferences menu. Like everything else about Windscribe, it's unintuitive but works great once you figure it out. Windscribe speed test I used speedtest.net to test Windscribe's speeds. In case you aren't familiar with the jargon, Ping measures a server's latency, which is how long it takes a single packet of data to reach it from your device. Download speed measures how much data can be downloaded at a time, while upload speed shows how quickly you can send data to the network. Think of ping as your car's speed in miles per hour and download and upload speed as the amount of traffic on the road. As usual, I used the WireGuard protocol to run these tests, since it's almost always the fastest. Starting with my unprotected speeds at home in Portland, I moved gradually farther away until I was connecting to the other side of the world. Ideally, ping should increase linearly (not exponentially), while download and upload speeds don't dip much at all. I've recorded Windscribe's performance in the table below. Server location Ping (ms) Increase factor Download speed (Mbps) Percentage drop Upload speed (Mbps) Percentage drop Portland, USA (unprotected) 22 59.35 5.92 Vancouver, Canada (fastest location) 27 1.2x 55.89 5.83 5.56 6.08 Boston, USA 161 7.3x 48.49 18.30 5.66 4.39 Quito, Ecuador 283 12.9x 46.46 21.72 4.68 20.95 London, UK 287 13.0x 43.70 26.37 4.51 23.82 Nairobi, Kenya 595 27.0x 32.63 45.02 3.57 39.70 Seoul, South Korea 258 11.7x 43.27 27.09 4.48 24.32 Average 269 12.2x 45.07 24.06 4.74 19.93 Windscribe gave me some of the shortest latencies I've ever seen comparable to CyberGhost, whose ping lengths I was also very impressed by. Its download and upload speeds also look a lot like CyberGhost's, with both firmly in good-but-not-amazing territory. However, Windscribe's speeds were a lot more consistent. Throughout the tests, I hardly ever saw major fluctuations in the same location, on any metric. The Nairobi server seemed to be under some strain, but that's not unusual for a VPN in Africa. Every location except for that one followed a smooth downward curve. I'm happy with that; speed is one of the areas where you want your VPN to be reliably boring, not flashy. Practically, a speed test like this suggests that Windscribe is best for gaming, livestreaming and video chatting, and that it's perfectly serviceable for any other task you could do online. You may not get the best speeds you've ever seen, but unless your internet is bad to begin with, Windscribe should not slow it down enough to be noticeable. Windscribe security test I can say up top that Windscribe doesn't seem to have any dangerous security flaws, but I'll take this section to explain why I think that. To start with, it uses only the three VPN protocols currently known to be secure: WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2, plus a few other options all based on OpenVPN. With those options, you can be sure you're getting encryption that's currently uncrackable. It also passed two batteries of tests I ran on its security. The first set of tests looks for DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks and other slip-ups that might reveal your real IP address. The second checks whether data packets sent through the VPN tunnel are actually getting encrypted. Check each section below for details on how Windscribe did. VPN protocols A VPN protocol determines how exactly a VPN makes contact between its own servers, your device and your ISP. Certain protocols can make your VPN run faster, stabilize a shaky connection or get into websites other protocols fail to unlock. If you're having a problem with your VPN, changing the protocol is one of the first troubleshooting steps. Windscribe makes a total of six protocols available, though it's really just three, since four of the six are variations on OpenVPN. WireGuard works on every platform, and is currently the fastest and most stable its drawback used to be that it was new, but with the passage of time, it's no longer new enough to make it suspect. IKEv2 is a connection protocol that uses the separate IPSec protocol for its security. This double team's main strength is reconnecting to the VPN when a device switches networks; it's also good at not draining phone batteries. Windscribe supports IKEv2 on Mac, iOS and Windows. OpenVPN is the oldest open-source VPN protocol, refined by over a decade of repeated probing by volunteers. It's not only relatively fast and highly secure, but comes in two flavors: TCP, which makes connections more stable, and UDP, which is usually faster and should be your first resort with OpenVPN. Windscribe supports OpenVPN on all platforms. Windscribe rounds out the selection with two unique protocols, both focused on hiding your VPN traffic from firewalls and censors. Stealth uses the same connection ports as HTTPS, so it can't be blocked by shutting certain ports down entirely. WStunnel obfuscates connections even further by using the extremely common WebSocket technology to establish VPN connections. Both these proprietary protocols are much slower than the other options, but can save you if you find yourself repeatedly blocked while using Windscribe. Leak test I started my leak tests by using ipleak.net to check several Windscribe servers for IP leaks of all sorts. Each time I connected and checked my location, I only saw the VPN server's IP address, never my real one. I tried to trip Windscribe up by switching servers while remaining connected, even changing continents, but my true location never once slipped out. This puts its security solidly above CyberGhost, Norton VPN and many others. I couldn't find any holes in Windscribe's armor. Sam Chapman for Engadget Windscribe automatically blocks IPv6 traffic while connected, so IPv6 leaks weren't going to be a thing. I finished the test by checking five servers using browserleaks.com/webrtc, finding no issues each time. Encryption test The final step is to make sure Windscribe is applying encryption properly through its VPN protocols. For this test, I used a free packet sniffer app called Wireshark to look directly at what my computer was sending out. Windscribe's encryption looks solid. Sam Chapman for Engadget It's a bit hard to tell what's going on, but to summarize, I've loaded a website without HTTPS protection and checked whether Windscribe managed to apply that protection. The lack of readable information in the data stream proves that its encryption is indeed working as expected. How much does Windscribe cost? Windscribe has three subscription options (not counting its free plan, which I'll discuss in a moment). One month of Pro service costs $9.00 after Mullvad, the second-cheapest monthly subscription to a top-tier VPN. You can also pay $69 for a 12-month Pro subscription, working out to $5.75 per month. Both of these tiers give you the exact same set of Pro features and can be used on unlimited simultaneous devices. The cost of Windscribe Pro at publication time. Sam Chapman for Engadget The third option is to build your own plan. Build-A-Plan is an interesting beast that's unique to Windscribe. When you choose a custom plan, you must spend at least $3 per month. Gaining access to all the Pro servers in a country costs $1. For each country you add, you get an additional 10GB of data per month on top of the 10GB already included for free. If you'd rather not budget your data at all, you can pay another $1 for unlimited data, plus 10 custom rules for the R.O.B.E.R.T. content blocker (I'll untangle the tortured acronym soon). It's a little convoluted, but wonderfully flexible. You can even change your Build-A-Plan in the middle of the subscription period. Windscribe also offers shared static IPs for an extra fee. You can add a datacenter IP to any plan for $2 per month or a residential IP (usually better at getting around restrictions) for $8 per month. Team billing is also available through ScribeForce at $3 per seat per month, including a centralized management panel. The Windscribe free plan Windscribe isn't the overall best free VPN hide.me wins that honor with its more flexible data limit but it's close. Free users get access to servers in 10 countries: the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Germany, Switzerland, Romania and Hong Kong. If you plotthat on a map, you'll see that the Windscribe free plan is most useful in North America and Europe. Free users start with a data allotment of 2GB per month. The monthly limit rises to 10GB if you sign up with a confirmed email address and 15GB if you post about Windscribe on Twitter/X. That's enough for casual browsing, but streaming in standard definition takes about 1GB per hour, so you won't be doing much binge-watching. On the upside, a free plan gives you access to all Windscribe's features except for dynamic port forwarding. You can set three R.O.B.E.R.T. rules and use your free account on an infinite number of devices (subject to the usual restrictions about exploiting that for commercial purposes as Windscribe itself states, no one person has 30 devices that need a VPN). Windscribe side apps and bundles Windscribe doesn't have any add-ons of its own except for static IP addresses. However, it does offer discount codes for a group of "partners in privacy" that share its business ethics. The coupon codes are available here and don't require a Windscribe subscription to use. The five members of Windscribe's gang. Sam Chapman for Engadget There are currently five allies in the gang. Control D offers DNS filtering for organizations to block unwanted websites; the Windscribe coupon gives you 50 percent off. You can get 25 percent off a one-year subscription to addy.io, an open-source email anonymizer, and Ente, an encrypted storage space for photos and videos. Rounding out the team are Kagi, a private search engine which you can use for three months free with the Windscribe coupon, and Notesnook, an encrypted notes app. Windscribe's coupon gives you a 10% discount on Notesnook's yearly plans in perpetuity. Close-reading Windscribe's privacy policy Windscribe's marketing positions it as serious about user independence, so I came into this section hoping for a privacy policy that backs those words up. An early green flag is that the policy is short, succinct and obviously written to be read by the users themselves. It's also fantastic that you can sign up without an email address (though you will need one to get the full data allotment on the free plan). Windscribe gathers information on its website using Piwik, an open-source analytics tool that it manages itself; no third parties are involved. The Windscribe app itself collects no information except for the amount of data used in a month, the time of your last connection and the number of devices you have online at once. When actively connected, it also gives you an anonymized username necessary for the OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols. My only quibble is that Windscribe is oddly reluctant to identify which third-party payment processors it uses. The information does exist elsewhere an article in the knowledgebase states that payments are handled by "trusted third party processors such as PayPal and Stripe," and another page says that CoinPayments handles cryptocurrency transactions. It's a small thing, but the rest of the policy is so airtight that it stands out. Independent privacy audits Windscribe's apps are fully open-source (you can find them on Github here). In addition to this general exposure, it's also undergone three intensive audits from security firms. Leviathan Security looked into its desktop apps in 2021 and its mobile apps in 2022. The auditors made a total of five high-severity recommendations, all of which Windscribe claims to have addressed. More recently, Windscribe had its entire codebase audited by PacketLabs. The auditors' June 2024 report found that some of Windscribe's code was storing more user information than it strictly needed to. Windscribe also claims to have handled this risk. More importantly, PacketLabs found no intentional subversions of Windscribe's no-logs policy, so its privacy statements can likely be trusted. Further corroboration of the latter came from a 2025 court case in which Windscribe founder and CEO Yegor Sak was indicted in Greece and charged with a crime committed by a Windscribe user through an IP address in Finland. This case is obviously absurd like charging the head of GM with a single instance of vehicular manslaughter committed by someone driving a Buick but Sak was obliged to appear in court anyway. As Sak writes in the linked post, he could have turned over the logs and shown who actually committed the crime, but he couldn't since Windscribe doesn't keep that information. Had there been an alternative to waging an expensive and inconvenient legal campaign in another country, Sak would surely have taken it. The fact that he didn't is strong proof of Windscribe's no-logging policy. Can Windscribe change your virtual location? Changing your IP address with a VPN can do more than just anonymize your internet activity. A service like Windscribe can give you an IP address associated with a certain country or region, letting you use the internet like you were there. This has applications ranging from the serious (break out of a nationwide firewall to document human rights issues) to the fun (get new titles on streaming platforms without paying for a new subscription). Netflix is a great tool for testing whether a VPN can change your virtual location. Like most streamers, it tries to block all VPN access to protect the copyrights it holds. Consequently, if a VPN can crack Netflix, it must be serious about keeping its server network fresh to foil any potential blockers. A successful location change on Netflix using Windscribe. Sam Chapman for Engadget For this test, I tried to access Netflix three times each through five different Windscribe server locations, refreshing the connection to use different servers each time. I looked for successful Netflix access, plus differnt content to prove my location had actually changed. Server location Unblocked Netflix? Changed content? Vancouver, Canada 3/3 3/3 Queretaro, Mexico 3/3 3/3 Tokyo, Japan 3/3 3/3 London, UK 3/3 3/3 Auckland, NZ 3/3 3/3 Windscribe got a perfect score. Netflix loaded easily every time, and the content was always localized to the country I chose. With this performance combined with its fairly consistent speeds over long distances, Windscribe makes a nearly perfect streaming VPN. The only downside is that the data limits on the free plan mean you'll probably have to pay for serious streaming time. Investigating Windscribe's server network Windscribe has 193 server locations in 71 countries, which it insists on listing as "69+" (again, hilarious). Although 193 sounds like a lot, many of them are duplicate locations in the same city. This isn't necessarily a problem, but for accuracy's sake, the total number of cities with Windscribe servers is 122. Region Countries with servers Cities with servers Total server locations Virtual server locations North America 6 40 61 0 South America 7 7 9 0 Europe 38 47 75 0 Africa 3 3 5 0 Middle East 2 2 2 0 Asia 12 16 28 1 Oceania 2 6 12 0 Antarctica 1 1 1 1 Total 71 122 193 2 (1 percent) The bigger story here is Windscribe's spurning of virtual servers. A virtual server location is physically located in a different region than the one it outwardly displays. For example, a server with an Indian IP address might really be in Singapore. Throughout the entire Windscribe network, only two servers are virtual: one in India and one in Antarctica. This is both good and bad. On the positive side, the near-total lack of virtual servers means you can be sure of how any server will perform. If it says it's in Buenos Aires, it'll run like it's in Buenos Aires you won't be surprised with lagging speeds because it's really in Miami. This also makes it clear that Windscribe isn't interested in pumping up its network size for marketing purposes. Windscribe's server selection list on the Mac app. Sam Chapman for Engadget On the other hand, virtual locations aren't an inherently bad thing. Windscribe acts as though advertising hype is the only reason any VPN would employ them, but there are real use cases. Virtual servers can be used to place locations inside countries where real servers would risk confiscation by the government, like Russia, India and China. Windscribe chooses instead to place real servers in Russia and India, both of which have data retention laws that directly conflict with its own privacy policy. Does this mean that using Windscribe's Russian servers will earn you a midnight visit from the FSB? Probably not. Assuming Windscribe is following its no-logs policy (which appears to be the case), there won't be any user data on those servers if the government seizes them. But it does mean they're effectively running illegal data centers which could be raided and shut down at any time. Be aware of this if you depend on Windscribe's locations in Russia or India. Extra features of Windscribe As covered in the UI section, Windscribe has a lot going on in its apps. The Connection tab alone has 13 different features, including two submenus with several options of their own. With this many options, and so many of them highly situational, I won't be able to cover every nook and cranny without this review getting seriously bloated. I've instead chosen some of the most important and illustrative features to give you a clear sense of the whole picture. Network Options You'll find this feature at the top of te Connection tab. When you click Network Options, you should see the name of your current Wi-Fi network and all the others your Windscribe account has discovered. This feature lets you control how the VPN reacts to each network it encounters, not unlike CyberGhost's Smart Rules. Just switching around a few terms would make this a lot less confusing. Sam Chapman for Engadget The app does a remarkably poor job of explaining how this works, so I'll break it down for you here. When the Auto-Secure Networks switch is turned on, Windscribe will automatically mark each new network as Secured a word which here means "Windscribe turns on when it encounters the network." So far, so good. But if you turn Auto-Secure Networks off, things get weird. Without it, Windscribe tags every network you encounter as Unsecured. Whenever you connect to an Unsecured network, Windscribe immediately disconnects itself. This means it secures all Secured networks and does not secure any Unsecured networks. It feels backwards until you realize that Windscribe is referring entirely to itself here. "Secured" doesn't mean that the Wi-Fi network is password-protected or otherwise considered safe, and "Unsecured" doesn't mean that it's open to the public without a password. All that matters is whether or not you want Windscribe to activate or deactivate on that network. It's a useful feature that even lets you choose a VPN protocol for each network, but it would help to bring it more in line with mainstream terminology. R.O.B.E.R.T. This mouthful of a feature name allegedly stands for Remote Omnidirectional Badware Eliminating Robotic Tool. This is perhaps the apex of the VPN industry's unfortunate habit of saddling perfectly good features with word-salad names (yes, I'm aware it's supposed to be funny). R.O.B.E.R.T. is perhaps the most customizable content blocker on any VPN right now. To start with, it includes eight lists of sites it blocks at the DNS level: Malware, Ad + Trackers, Social Networks, Porn, Gambling, Clickbait, Other VPNs and Crypto. These vary in usefulness, and you can't determine the contents of each list, but it's nice to have such a range of choices. It eliminates all the badware, remotely AND omnidirectionally! Sam Chapman for Engadget Where R.O.B.E.R.T really shines, though, is in its browser-based customization dashboard. Each Free user can make three custom rules, and Pro upgrades that to 10. Each custom rule can be used to block a specific website or network or allowlist it from one of the other general blocklists. You can also set it to spoof a domain, though there's no practical reason to do this (Windscribe's idea of a "useful" application is making your friends think your post made the front page of Reddit). Split tunneling Split tunneling sends some of your internet requests through the VPN tunnel while others go unencrypted as normal. This can be useful if you get worse-than-usual speeds and want to minimize the amount of traffic going through the VPN, or for certain websites that refuse to work with any VPN server. You can split tunnel on Windscribe's apps for Windows, Mac and Android. Windows and Android users can split by app or website, while Mac users can only split by website. Windscribe lets you choose whether your split tunnel will be inclusive (only apps and IPs on the list will go through the VPN) or exclusive (the apps and IPs on the list will not go through the VPN). Note that R.O.B.E.R.T. rules apply to the entire system, even excluded apps and domains. Firewall and Always On VPN Instead of a kill switch, which it derides as an incomplete solution, Windscribe includes a Firewall feature on desktop and an Always On VPN feature on mobile. The Firewall can be considered a strong kill switch that prevents any internet traffic from going outside the VPN tunnel something doesn't have to go wrong for the blocks to activate. Always On VPN on iOS and Android is functionally the same. A more proactive defense has its advantages, but it would be nice if Windscribe included the weak kill switch option. Kill switches and firewalls can be overactive, and sometimes, you don't want the strongest level of security. Circumvent Censorship This feature is designed to let you access Windscribe on networks that don't want you to use a VPN, from school and work systems to entire censorious countries like China. Windscribe isn't forthcoming about how it works, but it's probably a deep-packet obfuscation that makes VPN traffic look like regular traffic. I didn't have time to pop over to China and test Circumvent Censorship, but I'm glad it exists. Windscribe customer support options Clicking the question mark tab on the Windscribe app shows you the full list of support options. You can peruse the knowledgebase, ask their chatbot Garry, talk directly to a human or check out their user communities on Reddit and Discord. Most of these lead back to Garry. Sam Chapman for Engadget I started with the written FAQs. At the top of the knowledgebase, there's a row of buttons you can click to see only articles relating to a particular operating system. This is a good idea in theory, but it's not implemented very well there's no visible tagging system, so we can't see how it's deciding which articles to filter. The search bar is much more likely to get you where you need to go. It works instantaneously and always turns up relevant articles, though it's weirdly insistent on showing exactly 10 results. I have few complaints about articles themselves, which are written in a way any user should find useful (give or take yet more attempted humor). I tested the chatbot, Garry, by asking it about the mysterious Advanced Parameters tab of the Windscribe app. It explained each feature on that tab (none of which should be touched except by users with technical knowledge) in a spiel that was clearly pre-written but nonetheless useful. Garry was launched in 2018, when IBM Watson was the biggest thing in AI, and recently revamped into "Garry 2.0" whether this is based on OpenAI or another platform is anyone's guess at te moment. Live support Windscribe appears to handle all of its own support, without outsourcing to Zendesk or a similar third party. If you decide not to go through Garry, Windscribe does have the option of connecting directly to a human. However, the Contact Humans option on the app sends you directly back to Garry. It's eventually possible to get Garry to connect you to a real person, but that doesn't excuse Windscribe building an outright lie into its app. The Contact Support button on the knowledgebase, which I expected to lead to a ticket submission, also sends you straight to Garry. Windscribe really, really wants you to use Garry, in case that wasn't clear. You might have a better time going straight to the Windscribe Discord server or the r/Windscribe subreddit, both of which are linked to in the app. Windscribe background check Windscribe eschews a lot of the things we've come to expect from a VPN provider. It doesn't pay for ads anywhere. It has no affiliate relationships with news sites. The only thing resembling a Windscribe ad campaign is the free-plan data reward for Xeeting about it. It doesn't even have any venture capital investors it's completely self-funded and self-hosted. As a jaded and cynical reviewer who was already annoyed by Windscribe's memelord attitude, I was prepared to sniff out any hypocrisy in its background, which makes it all the more impressive that I didn't find any. Since its founding in Canada in 2016, Windscribe has never once been involved in any public doings that contradict its statements of ethics. It's even given free unlimited VPN access to every journalist working in Ukraine. The only thing I could find resembling a controversy was an incident in July 2021 when Ukrainian police confiscated two servers that weren't fully encrypted. Although this would only have posed a risk to users running a customized connection profile under very specific conditions, it was still a lapse. Windscribe responded appropriately in my view, ending the legacy OpenVPN implementation that caused the problem. Canadian headquarters Windscribe is based in Canada, which is one of the Five Eyes nations (along with the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand). This sounds scary, but it's not actually an issue, as Yegor Sak himself points out in a blog post I reference frequently. Five Eyes is not an organization, but an agreement between five allied countries to share necessary intelligence with each other. This can absolutely be misused. If the U.S. government wants to spy on someone without running into the 4th Amendment, it can ask the Brits to spy on that person instead and tell them what they find, knowing the Constitution can't determine what other countries do to our citizens. As bad as that is for our civil liberties, it doesn't actually change anything where VPNs are concerned. If a VPN isn't logging user data, there shouldn't be anything for any of the Five Eyes (or Nine Eyes or Fourteen Eyes) nations to find. And if it is keeping logs, you shouldn't be using it no matter where its headquarters are. Final verdict You might wonder, at this point, why my distaste for Windscribe's tryhard sense of humor has featured so prominently in this review. One reason is that I had to read a lot of it this week, and you must suffer as I have suffered. But it also makes Windscribe look very good by implication. Having no patience for the discount-4chan act that pervades Windscribe's brand, I was primed to dislike the VPN itself and I simply couldn't. This is not to say I had no problems at all with Windscribe. Its physical servers in Russia are difficult to trust. Its help options lean way too heavily on Garry the chatbot. Its app design and UI writing are significant faults. The free plan doesn't give you enough data for streaming. Having said all that, though, Windscribe does everything else right. It changes virtual locations and unblocks Netflix without breaking a sweat. Its servers keep latencies low, and download speeds remain solid across the world. The apps may look bad, but they never break down. Some features, like R.O.B.E.R.T. and Auto-Secure, are both useful to everybody and deeply customizable for power users. Windscribe may be best for privacy nerds who know how all its doohickeys work, but it's a VPN I recommend for everybody. In a world of predatory software, it's a relief to use an app that's unabashedly on the customer's side. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/windscribe-review-despite-the-annoyances-it-has-the-right-idea-120000837.html?src=rss
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