The best free alternatives to Microsoft Word 2017

Download of the day: CyberGhost VPN

Cyberghost VPN

In these dark times of hackers intercepting data, governments spying on their citizens’ perfectly legal activities and YouTube geo-blocking videos in some countries because of record companies’ nastygrams a virtual private networking app, or VPN for short, is increasingly important.

There are many VPN apps out there, but very few that rhyme with toast. More importantly, CyberGhost VPN is really, really good.

Why you need it

The internet can be a dangerous place, and if you’re sharing data you don’t want to fall into the wrong hands then it’s a scary place too. Sadly we think the need for VPNs for everyday browsing is just going to keep on growing.  

VPNs are routinely used to protect companies’ important files and emails, and the same tech is just as effective in ensuring nobody hacks your laptop when you’re on a public Wi-Fi hotspot. In many cases you also get the happy bonus of bypassing geographical restrictions on things such as online video services, where a clip might be licensed for viewing in one country but not in another, and on websites that really, really, really don’t want you to see anything other than the one for the country you’re in. 

Download here: CyberGhost VPN

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The best free Photoshop filters 2017

Lightweight Windows 10 Cloud OS appears to threaten Chromebooks’ throne

Windows 10 Cloud is an alleged fresh version of Microsoft’s latest operating system which could be arriving soon, although the new variant won’t actually be a cloud-powered OS as seen on Google’s Chromebooks. Rather, it will reportedly be a new take on Windows RT (kind of) which will still threaten the Chromebook.

The name Windows 10 Cloud was spotted by folks digging deep inside recent preview builds of Windows 10, including the infamous WalkingCat, a denizen of Twitter who is the source of many Microsoft rumors. 

And naturally it kicked off plenty of speculation about exactly what this spin on Windows 10 could be, with ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley tapping her inside sources at Microsoft to discover that this variant won’t actually be a cloud-driven OS (which makes the name a little bizarre, but hey).

Rather, the assertion from these sources is that this will simply be a cut-down version of Windows 10 that will only run universal apps from the Windows Store, so as mentioned, this is sort of the successor to Windows RT in that it’s aimed at budget machines.

In other words, a very basic version of Windows 10 which hardware manufacturers can deploy very cheaply – or maybe even free – to keep costs down, and push further and harder with lower-priced Windows devices. So in a roundabout way, it does have Chromebooks in its sights in terms of attacking this low-end of the notebook market, even if a ‘cloudy’ OS isn’t the goal.

Shifting apps

Before we get too carried away, though, bear in mind this is all speculation from, so don’t read too much into it. But this line of attack does make sense for Microsoft, and of course would also push the Windows Store harder, helping to shift more apps from there (which would be a major boon for the software giant, obviously).

There’s also chatter that this spin on Windows 10 will be aimed at the education sector – where Chromebooks are very strong, of course – and it could be a vehicle for pushing Office 365 and other Microsoft cloud services (that might be where the ‘Cloud’ moniker derives from).

Again, this is all guesswork, and Microsoft is officially saying absolutely nothing about this development (which is no great surprise).

When it comes to launch timing, given that references have popped up in Windows test builds now, Windows 10 Cloud could become a reality with the Creators Update due in April. Or possibly the following update later in the year, but it certainly seems likely that this is a project for 2017. Assuming anything comes of it at all, that is.

• Sticking with the Chromebook? These are the 7 best models you can buy

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Best iPad apps 2017: download these now

It's the apps that really set iOS apart from other platforms - there are higher quality apps available on the App Store for the iPad than any other tablet. So which ones are worth your cash? And which are the best free apps?

Luckily for you we've tested thousands of the best iPad apps so that you don't have to. So read on for our selection of the best iPad apps - the definitive list of what applications you need to download for your iPad now.

• Haven't bought an iPad yet and not sure which is best? We've got them listed on our best iPad ranking - or you can check out the best tablets list to see the full range available now.

If you are looking for games, then head over to Best iPad games - where we showcase the greatest games around for your iOS device. Or if you're using an iPhone 7 (or one of its excellent brethren) head over to our best iPhone apps list.

iA Writer provides a writing environment suitably focused for iPad, but that also makes nods to the desktop.

The main screen is smartly designed, with a custom keyboard bar offering Markdown and navigation buttons; if you’re using a mechanical keyboard, standard shortcuts are supported.

Further focus comes by way of a typewriter mode (auto-scrolling to the area you’re editing) and graying out lines other than the one you’re working on.

Elsewhere, you get an optional live character count, iCloud sync, and a robust Markdown preview. We’d like to see a split-screen mode for the last of those (as per the Mac version), but otherwise iA Writer’s a solid, effective and affordable minimal writing app for iPad.

1972’s ARP Odyssey was a classic of the era, and reborn in 2015 with a smart new design and modern connectors. Now, the duophonic synth is on iPad and, if anything, the digital incarnation beats the hardware original.

With ARP ODYSSEi, you still get the many synthesis controls of the real-world kit, allowing for a huge diversity of sound. The sliders are a mite fiddly, but any frustration is mitigated by the wealth of presets and ability to save your own.

The best bit, though, is the programmable arpeggiator, which transforms sounds into rich, exciting loops. Sadly, the feature is omitted from ODYSSEi’s Korg Gadget incarnation, but as a standalone synth for iPad, this one’s hard to beat.

Editing PDFs somehow feels like it should be the preserve of desktop software, but PDF Expert makes such tasks a cinch on an iPad.

You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox, and then get to work rearranging pages, adding new content, creating notes, completing forms, making highlights, and even doodling with your finger.

As a reader, the app is impressive, too, ably dealing with large PDFs. There’s also a text-to-speech mode that reads documents at a speed of your choosing, highlighting words as it goes.

The app also wisely integrates the kind of smarts found in the developer’s own Documents app, so you can use PDF Expert as a central repository for your iPad PDFs, filing, merging, archiving, and sharing them as needed.

We're not sure what makes this edition of the famous mockney chef's recipe book 'ultimate', bar that word being very clearly written on the icon.

Still, Jamie Oliver's Ultimate Recipes is certainly a very tasty app. The 600 recipes should satisfy any given mood, whether you're after a sickeningly healthy salad or fancy binging on ALL THE SUGAR until your teeth scream for mercy.

Smartly, every recipe offers step-by-step photos, so you can see how badly you’re going wrong at any point. And when you've nearly burned down the kitchen, given up and ordered a pizza, you can watch the two hours of videos that reportedly tell you how to "become a real kitchen ninja".

Note: this doesn't involve wearing lots of black and hurling sharp objects at walls, sadly.

Music-creation apps can overwhelm, even when trying to be friendly. Lily neatly takes a rather more playful – if slightly twee – stab at having you make tunes.

You start by selecting a color and shape. The former dictates an instrument and the latter the number of leaves on your lily. Tap + to open the flower, and then the flower itself to access a pulsating playback head.

You then tap spaces to lay down notes, which can be shifted entire octaves by prodding adjacent vertical lines. Repeat the process with more lilies and you'll soon have an oddly delicate cacophony serenading your ears.

Lily's a very sweet app. It's perhaps a touch too abstract to be as immediate as it wants to be, but all becomes clear with a little play. We do wish songs could be saved (although you can export a recording) – the lives of these lilies are all too fleeting.

So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.

The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.

And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.

There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun.
 

For free, Ferrite Recording Studio provides the means to record the odd bit of audio, bookmark important bits, and mash together a few such recordings into something resembling a podcast. But pay the $19.99/£14.99 IAP and this app gives desktop podcast-creation products a run for their money.

Using the smartly designed interface, you can import clips and sounds from various sources, craft multi-track edits that make full use of slicing, fading, ducking, and silence stripping, and add professional effects to give vocals that bit of extra punch.

On an iPhone, this is an impressive app, but on iPad, the extra screen space you get makes for significantly faster editing of your audio and a far superior user experience compared to the cramped screen.

Rather than be all things to all people, Zen Brush 2 is a painting app with a sense of focus, emulating the feel of an East Asian ink brush. It's therefore suited to flowing, semi-abstract artistic effort with your finger to offer a digital take on calligraphy.

On iPhone’s teeny screen this app feels a little redundant, but it comes alive on the iPad's larger display, especially if you have a stylus. The selection of tools is intentionally limited to keep you focused, but you can still swap between a red and black brush, experiment with alternate brush sizes or dryness values and swap out the underlying canvas.

There is a sense of give and take about Zen Brush 2's level of realism: strokes are applied wonderfully, but inks don't interact with each other nor the paper beneath. Still, the strong sense of character gives artwork created in Zen Brush 2 a unique feel and it's a relaxing, almost meditative, app to spend time with.
 

The iPad Google Maps app has a perfectly serviceable (if, in recent updates, somewhat fiddly) Street View mode, and so the notion of paying for an app to browse such panoramas may seem strange. But Streets 3 proves itself to be interesting and genuinely entertaining.

Although you can browse locations in Streets 3 by dragging a map and dropping a pin to define a location, the app speeds things along with a gallery. This showcases famous sights and places, including museums, zoos, and even the Large Hadron Collider.

Using the old arrows movement system (rather than the newer Google Maps swiping model) makes for fast, efficient navigation.

Usefully, a little extra context is provided about the famous sites, so you can learn rather than just gawp; and favorites can be stored for return visits. None of which perhaps cements Streets 3 as essential, but it's certainly fun for the armchair tourist.
 

There are loads of great painting apps for illustrators and artists, but Amaziograph tries something a bit different, introducing you to a world of tessellation and symmetries. This makes for an app that has plenty of potential for professional use, but also one that anyone can enjoy.

To begin, you select a style. The simplest is a split-screen mirror, but there are also kaleidoscope-like options, and those that create tiled, repeating patterns. It's then a question of scribbling on the canvas, and watching a pattern form before your eyes.

The toolset is quite basic (with a bafflingly overthought color palette selector), but Amaziograph chalks up a big win when it comes to flexibility.

At any point, you can adjust the settings of the current grid, or choose a different symmetry/tessellation type. This propels the app far beyond 'toy' territory, opening up avenues for creativity regardless of your level of artistic prowess.

As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.

As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.

But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.

Whether you need a few minutes of peace or help to fall asleep after hours of stress, Flowing offers meditative splashy reflection. Choose from six scenes, plonk headphones on and then just sit and listen to gorgeous 3D audio recordings of streams, waterfalls and rivers.

Should you feel the need, noodle about with the parallax photo - although that’s frankly the least interesting bit of the app.

There is room for screen interaction though - the slider button gives you access to a mixer, to trigger ambient soundtracks by composer David Bawiec, and add birdsong and rain; while the Flowing icon houses guided meditations by Lua Lisa.

There’s also a timer, so you can fall asleep to a gently meandering brook without it then burbling away all night. In all, even if you don’t make use of every feature, Flowing is an effective, polished relaxation aid.

Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.

It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.

There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.

Scanners for iPad have come a long way from their roots as souped-up camera apps, and Scanbot 6 is making a play to be the only one on your iPad - by doing way more than just scanning.

The basics are ably dealt with - the app automatically locates documents in front of your iPad’s camera (assuming there’s contrast with the desk underneath), and you can crop, rotate, color-adjust, and save the result.

Buy the Pro IAP, though, and Scanbot becomes far more capable. It’ll run OCR text recognition on any document, and attempt (with a reasonable degree of success) to extract details for single-tap ’actions’, such as triggering a phone call or visiting a website, based on what it finds.

There are annotation and PDF signing tools, and the means to reorder pages in multi-page documents. So rather than being a tap-and-done scanner, this app keeps helping once the scans are done, making it an essential purchase for the office-oriented. (We do miss the smiling robot icon, though – the new one is so dull.)

For the majority of iPad users, Apple’s iMovie is the go-to app for cutting footage and spitting out a movie. However, Pinnacle Studio Pro is a great option for anyone who wants a more desktop-like video editing experience.

The interface is efficient, enabling you to pre-trim clips, and quickly navigate your in-progress film by way of a standard timeline, or quickly jumping to scenes by tapping clip thumbnails. Additionally, there are tools for complex audio edits across three separate tracks, and adjusting a clip’s rotation.

The only downside is an initial feeling of complexity and an ongoing sense of clutter - this isn’t an especially pretty app. However, it is a usable, powerful and effective one, and that more than makes up for any niggles. 

Another example of a book designed for kids that adults will sneak a peek at when no-one's watching,Namoo teaches about the wonders of plant life. Eschewing the kind of realistic photography or illustration you typically see in such virtual tomes, Namoo is wildly stylized, using an arresting low-poly art style for its interactive 3D simulations.

Each of these is married with succinct text, giving your brain something to chew on as you ping the components of a plant's cells (which emit pleasingly playful - if obviously not terribly realistic - sounds and musical notes) or explore the life cycle of an apple.

Wikipedia is one of the most amazing resources around, but it looks like a dog's dinner. You might find certain subject matter thrilling, but your eyes will glaze over before you get through half an article on an iPad. Viki rethinks this entire experience, unassumingly describing itself as "a nice reader for Wikipedia".

Every aspect of Viki feels like output from a careful, considerate designer. There's a smart nearby places view, where lines snake from an overhead map to Wikipedia article titles awaiting a tap, search results include brief synopses and images, but best of all, the articles themselves look great - more like a book to lean back and read than a website you'd prefer to flee from.

There are plenty of apps that enable you to plonk text over photos, but Over excels when it comes to control. Load a photo (or start with a blank canvas) and you can add words, stickers and additional imagery, gradually fashioning a card, poster or slice of social media genius.

For free, you get the basic app, but a one-off IAP unlocks handy additional features, such as drop shadows and adjustments. In combination with editable layers and saved projects, these things make Over resemble something you'd find on the desktop, albeit with the kind of intuitive and immediate interface you only find in the best iPad apps.

On the desktop, Scrivener is widely acclaimed as the writer's tool of choice. The feature-rich app provides all kinds of ways to write, even incorporating research documents directly into projects. Everything's always within reach, and your work can constantly be rethought, reorganised, and reworked.

On iPad, Scrivener is, astonishingly, almost identical to its desktop cousin. Bar some simplification regarding view and export options, it's essentially the same app. You get a powerful 'binder' sidebar for organizing notes and documents, while the main view area enables you to write and structure text, or to work with index cards on a cork board.

There's even an internal 'Split View', for simultaneously smashing out a screenplay while peering at research. With Dropbox sync to access existing projects, Scrivener is a no-brainer for existing users; and for newcomers, it's the most capable rich text/scriptwriting app on iPad.

At the last count, there were something like eleven billion sketching apps for iPad, and so you need something pretty special to stand out. Concepts shoots for a more professional audience - architects, designers, illustrators, and the like - but in doing so presents a far more flexible product than most.

When scribbling on the infinite canvas, you're drawing vector strokes, which can be individually selected and adjusted. The tools area is customizable and colors are selected using a Copic color wheel.

Pay the pro IAP and you unlock all kinds of features, including precision tools and shape guides, endless layers, and the means to export your work as high-res imagery, SVG, DXF or PSD. In use, whether using a finger or stylus, Concepts is elegant and usable but powerful.

So for free, this is an excellent tool for wannabe scribblers, and for the price of a couple of coffees, a high-end digital sketchbook suitable for professionals. Sounds like a bargain either way to us.

Your eyes might pop at the price tag of this iPad synth, but the hardware reissue of this amazing Moog was priced at a wallet-smashing $10,000. By contrast, the Model 15 iPad app seems quite the bargain. To our ears, it's also the best standalone iOS synth on mobile, and gives anything on the desktop a run for its money.

For people used to messing around with modular synths and plugging in patch leads, they'll be in heaven. But this isn't retro-central: you can switch the piano keyboard for Animoog's gestural equivalent; newcomers can work through straightforward tutorials about how to build new sounds from scratch; and those who want to dive right in can select from and experiment with loads of diverse, superb-sounding presets.

From its earliest days, the Mac was in part a product of Steve Jobs's obsession with typography. Although iOS includes a large range of fonts, your iPad lacks the extensibility of a Mac, which is where AnyFont comes in. Using the app, you can load new fonts from a PC or Mac by way of iTunes or import from Dropbox. Said fonts then become available in the likes of Pages, Keynote and Microsoft's Office suite.

There's no bulk import via Dropbox; and the app must create a separate profile for each imported font. These limitations initially irk, but also force a sense of focus, having you import only the fonts you really need rather than a collection of thousands.

Relaxation aids have a tendency to be a bit 'right on', but Windy frames itself as part story, part artwork, and comes across as elegant and interesting rather than preachy. You get six scenes to explore and each offers a parallax image to drag about and a piece of text to read.

But it's the audio experience that really grabs hold. Each scene features a unique 3D wind recording, which sounds superb through decent headphones. Using the app's settings, you can mix in rain, water, birdsong and cricket noises. The composition you create plays indefinitely, or you can set a timer, to help you nod off to your custom soundscape.

There are plenty of apps that enable you to add comic-like filters and the odd speech balloon to your photos, but Comic Life 3 goes the whole hog regarding comic creation. You select from pre-defined templates or basic page layouts, and can then begin working on a Marvel-worrying masterpiece.

Importing images is straightforward, and you get plenty of control over sound effects and speech balloons. For people who are perhaps taking things a bit too seriously (or actual comic creators, who can use this app for quick mock-ups), there's a bundled script editor as well.

Oddly, Comic Life 3's filters aren't that impressive, not making your photos look especially hand-drawn. But otherwise the app is an excellent means of crafting stories on an iPad, and you can export your work in a range of formats to share with friends - and Stan Lee.

It's been a long time coming, but finally Tweetbot gets a full-fledged modern-day update for iPad. And it's a good one, too. While the official Twitter app's turned into a 'blown-up iPhone app' monstrosity on Apple's tablet, Tweetbot makes use of the extra space by way of a handy extra column in which you can stash mentions, lists, and various other bits and bobs.

Elsewhere, this latest release might lack a few toys Twitter selfishly keeps for itself, but it wins out in terms of multitasking support, granular mute settings, superb usability, and an interesting Activity view if you're the kind of Twitter user desperate to know who's retweeting all your tiny missives.

This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.

For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.

(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)

There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.

Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.

Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.

You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.

The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.

Pop music is about getting what you expect. Ambient music has always felt subtly different, almost like anything could happen. With generative audio, this line of thinking became reality. Scape gives you a combined album/playground in this nascent genre, from the minds of Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers.

Each track is formed by way of adding musical elements to a canvas, which then interact in sometimes unforeseen ways. Described as music that "thinks for itself", Scape becomes a pleasing, fresh and infinitely replayable slice of chillout bliss. And if you're feeling particularly lazy, you can sit back and listen to an album composed by the app's creators.

Illustration tools are typically complex. Sit someone in front of Adobe Photoshop and they'll figure out enough of it in fairly short order. Adobe Illustrator? No chance. Assembly attempts to get around such roadblocks by turning graphic design into the modern-day touchscreen equivalent of working with felt shapes — albeit very powerful felt shapes that can shift beneath your fingers.

At the foot of the screen are loads of design elements, and you drag them to the canvas. Using menus and gestures, shapes can be resized, coloured, duplicated and transformed. Given enough time and imagination, you can create abstract masterpieces, cartoonish geometric robots, and beautiful flowing landscapes.

It's intuitive enough for anyone, but we suspect pro designers will enjoy Assembly too, perhaps even using it for sketching out ideas. And when you're done, you can output your creations to PNG or SVG.

Typography is something that doesn't come naturally to everyone. And so while there are excellent apps for adding text to images, you might want more help, rather than spending hours fine-tuning a bunch of misbehaving letters. That's where Retype comes in.

You load a photo or a piece of built-in stock art, and type some text. Then it's just a case of selecting a style. The type's design updates whenever you edit your text, and variations can be accessed by repeatedly prodding the relevant style's button. Basic but smart filter, blur, opacity and fade commands should cement Retype's place on your iPad.

Even though the iPad is an immensely powerful mobile device, there's no getting away from it sometimes being fiddly for performing complex tasks; this is all the more frustrating if said tasks are something you must do regularly. Fortunately, Workflow is here to help.

It includes over 200 actions that work with built-in and third-party apps, enabling you to fashion complex automation that's subsequently activated at the touch of a button.

To help you get started, the gallery houses dozens of pre-built workflows, and for added flexibility, you can access those you create or install from inside the app, via the Today widget, or by way of a custom Home screen app-like shortcut.

iPads have opened up a world of creative possibilities for guitarists by way of apps that ape all kinds of amps and stomp boxes. But AmpliTube Acoustic does something new. The clue's in the title — this is a tone studio created for acoustic guitars, and designed to be used with the iRig Acoustic clip-on microphone.

Highlights include a particularly lovely 12-string simulator, and the 'bass maker', which adds low-end to your strumming. Of course, electric guitarists can also use the app, for clean tones and effects, and developer IK Multimedia has, as usual, issued a limited freemium version that acts as a demo of sorts.

There are plenty of great distraction-free writing apps for iPad, but Ulysses for iPad adds serious management and editing clout to the mix. The idea is you use the app for all your writing — notes; in-progress text; final edits; and export. Items in your library can be manually sorted, grouped and filtered; text can be processed to PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, HTML and ePub.

But what's most astonishing is how the app's interface mirrors its Mac counterpart's, and yet still feels entirely at home on the iPad. (And for iPad Pro users hankering after a top-notch writing app to use in Split View, look no further).

The lofty boast with RealBeat is that you can use the app to make music with everything. The remarkable thing is, you really can. The app has eight slots for samples, waiting for input from your iPad's mic.

You can record snippets of any audio you fancy: your voice; a spoon smacking a saucepan; a pet, confused at you holding your iPad right in front of its face. These samples can then be arranged into loops and songs using a familiar drum-machine-style sequencer and pattern editor.

Completed masterpieces can be exported using Audio Copy and iTunes File Sharing, and the app also integrates with Audiobus.

On the desktop, Panic's Transmit is a perfectly decent FTP client. But when it was first released for iPad, Transmit for iOS felt rather more like the future. It was smart and elegant, utilising all of the then-new iOS features, such as Share sheets.

Even today, its interface seems a step beyond its contemporaries — the vibrant icons and dark lists look gorgeous and modern. Most importantly, the app remains very usable, with an excellent drag-and-drop model, smart previews, and support for a huge range of services, including local shared Mac folders.

Calling Editorial a text editor does it a disservice. That's not to say Editorial isn't any good as a text editor, because it very much is. You get top-notch Markdown editing, with an inline preview, and also a TaskPaper mode for plain text to-do lists.

But what really sets Editorial apart is the sheer wealth of customisation options. You get themes and custom snippets, but also workflows, which can automate hugely complex tasks. You get the sense some of these arrived from the frustrations at how slow it is to perform certain actions on an iPad; but a few hours with Editorial and you'll wish the app was available for your Mac or PC too.

Previously known as iDraw, Graphic is now part of the Autodesk stable. Visually, it looks an awful lot like Adobe Illustrator, and it brings some suitably high-end vector-drawing smarts to Apple's tablet.

All the tools and features you'd expect are present and correct; and while it's admittedly a bit slower and fiddlier to construct complex imagery on an iPad than a PC, Graphic is great to have handy when you're on the move. Smartly, the app boasts plentiful export functions, to continue your work elsewhere, and will sync with its iPhone and Mac cousins across iCloud.

Depending on your age and media preferences, Molecules by Theodore Gray might appear to be the future of books, a modern take on a CD-ROM, or something that's escaped from a Harry Potter movie. At its core, it is, of course, a textbook. But this is a textbook that begs to be explored, primarily due to dazzling your senses with dozens of animated photographic objects that you can interact with.

This is a trick publisher Touchpress has used before, but it never really gets old. Spinning objects beneath your fingers adds a playful side to a subject that could be considered quite dry; this is further enhanced by videos you can drag to scrub through, and molecule simulations.

The simulations are perhaps the smartest aspect of the app, not because they're the most visually exciting, but because of what they represent. In dragging their component parts around and seeing how molecules react to changes in temperature, you're suddenly very aware these aren't static building blocks, but are always alive and in motion.

A printed tome can only hint at such things, but this digital volume brings a level of intrigue and immersion paper simply cannot match - making it well worth the higher cost.

One of the curious things about the iPad is the absence of major Adobe apps from the App Store. The creative giant instead seems content with smaller, simpler 'satellite' apps, assuming users will continue to rely on the desktop for in-depth work. Pixelmator thumbs its nose to such thinking, reworking the majority of its desktop cousin (itself a kind of streamlined Photoshop) for the iPad.

Given the low price tag, this is an astonishingly powerful app, offering brushes, layers, gorgeous filters, levels editing, and more. You need to invest some time to get the most out of Pixelmator, but do so and the app will forever weld itself to your Home screen.

There are loads of sketching tools for iPad, but it feels like Procreate is the one really forging ahead, bringing artists a well-balanced mix of power and accessibility.

If you want to keep things simple, Procreate gets out of your way. The toolbar doesn't distract, and the only on-screen controls are handy sliders for brush size and opacity; but even these can all be auto-hidden after a user-defined period, leaving the entire screen to display your masterpiece.

Whether drawing with a finger or a stylus, Procreate proves responsive and feels surprisingly tactile. The tool selection is straightforward but offers real depth, not least in how you can really delve into brushes and mess about with their characteristics.

But the app has also taken to heart the fact it's running on a touchscreen. To straighten a stroke, you simply hold its end point for a second. Undo and redo are merely a two - or three - finger tap away. And the strength of layer effects is determined by swiping across the canvas, in a pleasing and precise manner.

If you're the kind of person who watches a plane fly overhead and wonders which airline it is, where it's going, and where it's been, you should download Plane Finder immediately. On launch, the app figures out where you are, loads a map, and gets to work showing planes zooming about the place.

If you live near an airport, this will evoke a combination of excitement and terror once you realise just how many steel tubes with wings are being hurled across the sky.

Plane Finder absolutely revels in this plane-based geekery. An augmented reality mode has you wave your iPad in front of your face to track the positions of planes in 3D. (Go outside for best effect — it's a bit weird having plane info splattered across office walls.) There's a time-travel mode, so you can watch a previous day's flights in fast-forward, and filters and alerts help you drill down into any specifics you happen to be interested in.

There's even a practical edge to the app, with arrivals and departures boards when you tap on an airport, although we will admit in that case it's probably a bit quicker to just visit the relevant website.

There are plenty of apps that provide the means to turn photos into messages and poster-style artwork. Elsewhere in this list we mention the excellent Retype, for example. But if you hanker after more control, Fontmania is a good bet.

This isn't the most complex or feature-rich app of its kind, but it is extremely pleasing to use. On selecting your photo, you can add a filter. Then it's down to business with typography. The 'Art' section houses frames, dividers, shapes and pre-made 'artworks'. The 'Text' section is for typing out whatever you like, and you can choose from a range of fonts.

Really, it's the interface that makes Fontmania. The simple sidebar is clear and non-intrusive, providing quick access to tools like Color and Shadow. All items added to the canvas can be manipulated using standard iOS gestures, avoiding the awkwardness sometimes seen within this sort of app.

Perhaps best of all, though, Fontmania is a pay-once product. Download and you get access to everything, rather than suddenly discovering a drop shadow or extra font will require digging into your wallet again.

iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.

Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.

Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.

All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.

A lot of modern camera apps do much the same thing, presenting a seemingly endless array of filters but locking them into categories with names you can't hope to remember. The net result is people find a few they like and ignore the rest. infltr tries something a bit different, brutally simplifying and largely randomising the entire process.

On selecting an image from your camera roll (annoyingly, this must be a local image - shared iCloud albums aren't supported), you tap the filter button and then drag your finger about. With every movement, the app cycles through its reported seven million different filters. If that still feels like too much work, double-tap to instantly apply a random filter.

This loss of control feels a bit weird at first, and there's no way to save favorite filters, but then that kind of feature would miss the point. infltr is about letting go, enjoying watching a photo change as you drag across the glass display. That it also works with Live Photos, panoramas and the camera adds further value to an initially seemingly throwaway but actually rather lovely app.

Freed from the confines of pesky reality and plastic, building blocks have become hugely popular in the digital realm. Tayasui Blocks isn't Minecraft, but does have some of that giant's elegance and social smarts.

Straightforward tools enable you to add and colour blocks and layers. Blocks almost stomp into place, emitting a pleasingly chunky sound effect; and if you find quietly deleting errors dull, you can lob a bomb or shuriken at errant cubes.

Tayasui Blocks is gesture-aware. You can zoom, move and spin your creation, making it simple to add blocks to any surface. And the aforementioned social aspect works very well, offering downloads of existing models and uploads of your own. (Wisely, the app knows if you make very minor alterations to someone else's design and blocks attempts at sharing.)

During testing, we found the odd bit of lag with very large, complex builds (a blocky Death Star even made an iPad Air 2 stutter), and optional stickers (mouths, eyes, and the like) seem broadly pointless. Otherwise, this is a first-rate, elegant and simple building-block toy for your tablet.

Korg Gadget bills itself as the "ultimate mobile synth collection on your iPad" and it's hard to argue. You get well over a dozen varied synths, ranging from drum machines through to ear-splitting electro monsters, and an intuitive piano roll for laying down notes.

A scene/loop arranger enables you to craft entire compositions in the app, which can then be shared via the Soundcloud-powered GadgetCloud or sent to Dropbox. This is a more expensive app than most, but if you're a keen electronic-music-oriented songwriter with an iPad, it's hard to find a product that's better value.

There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).

Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.

Every now and again, you get an app that ticks all the boxes: it's beautiful, audacious, productive, and nudges the platform forwards. This perfectly sums up Coda for iOS, a full-fledged website editor for iPad.

The app's graphic design borrows from the similarly impressive Transmit for iOS, all muted greys and vibrant icons. It's a style we wish Apple would steal. When it comes to editing, you can work remotely or pull down files locally; in either case, you end up working in a coding view with the clout you'd expect from a desktop product, rather than something on mobile. Naturally, Coda is a fairly niche tool, but it's essential for anyone who regularly edits websites and wants the ability to do so when away from the office.

Mind-mapping is one of those things that's usually associated with dull business things, much like huge whiteboards and the kind of lengthy meetings that make you hope the ground will swallow you up. But really they're perfect whenever you want to get thoughts out of your head and then organise them.

On paper, this process can be quite messy, and so MindNode is a boon. You can quickly and easily add and edit nodes, your iPad automatically positioning them neatly. Photos, stickers and notes can add further context, and your finished document can be shared publicly or privately using a number of services.

When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.

Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.

For most guitarists, sound is the most important thing of all. It's all very well having a massive rig of pedals and amps, but only if what you get out of it blows away anyone who's listening. For our money, BIAS FX is definitely the best-sounding guitar amp and effects processor on the iPad, with a rich and engaging collection of gear.

Fortunately, given the price-tag, BIAS FX doesn't skimp on set-up opportunities either. A splitter enables complex dual-signal paths; and sharing functionality enables you to upload your creations and check out what others have done with the app.

We love our iPads, but during the day tend to spend our time glued to glowing laptop and desktop displays. There's always the sense the iPad could be doing something. With Status Board that something is acting as a status display for you or your business. You drag and drop customisable panels, including clocks, weather forecasts, calendar details and website feeds, thereby giving you constant glanceable updates for important info.

A one-off IAP (£7.99/$9.99) unlocks further options that are mostly perhaps more suited to business environments (graphs, tables, HTML, photos, countdowns and text); and in either case support for HD displays enables you to present your status board really large, should you feel the need.

With visible pixels essentially eradicated from modern mobile device screens, it's amusing to see pixel art stubbornly refusing to go away. Chunky pixels are, though, a very pleasing aesthetic, perhaps in part because you know effort and thought has gone into the placement of every single dot. For our money, Pixaki is the only app worth considering for iPad-related pixel art.

It's simple and elegant, with straightforward tools, an extremely responsive canvas, global and document-specific palettes, and multiple brush sizes. Extra points, too, for the opacity slider's handle being a Pac-Man ghost.

Although Apple's Inter-App Audio, baked deep into iOS, has gained traction, it's Audiobus that leads in terms of app compatibility. The audio-routing system enjoys support from over 600 products, covering a huge range of DAWs, synths and guitar apps. With the multi-routing IAP ($4.99/£3.99), you can create complex chained effects and other sophisticated set-ups.

And if you've multiple iOS devices, Audiobus Remote (also $4.99/£3.99) provides a second screen for your session, simplifying recording, sample triggering, preset selection, and more.

You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too. Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.

Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.

Adult colouring books are all the rage, proponents claiming bringing colour to intricate abstract shapes helps reduce stress - at least until you realise you've got pen on your shirt and ground oil pastels into the sofa.

You'd think the process of colouring would be ideal for iPad, but most relevant apps are awful, some even forcing tap-to-fill. That is to colouring what using a motorbike is to running a marathon - a big cheat. Pigment is an exception, marrying a love for colouring with serious digital smarts.

On selecting an illustration, there's a range of palettes and tools to explore. You can use pencils and markers, adjusting opacity and brush sizes, and work with subtle gradients. Colouring can be 'freestyle', or you can tap to select an area and ensure you don't go over the lines while furiously scribbling. With a finger, Pigment works well, but it's better with a stylus; with an iPad Pro and a Pencil, you'll lob your real books in the bin.

The one niggle: printing and accessing the larger library requires a subscription in-app purchase. It's a pity there's no one-off payment for individual books, but you do get plenty of free illustrations, and so it's hard to grumble.

It's strange how iPad cookery apps seem to think they're books, unhelpfully offering a few lines of text and then abandoning you. Jamie Oliver's Recipes is a more appetising prospect. From the off, it makes your eyes pop and stomach rumble with mouth-watering foodie photos. Select a recipe and you'll see steps and ingredients, but tap 'Cook Now' and every step is adorned with a full-screen photo.

It feels like the app is helping you along, through showing you how your culinary masterpiece should appear at any given moment. Jamie even (oddly) occasionally pops up with the odd bit of sage advice.

Elsewhere, video tips provide insight into cooking basics, and there's a one-tap shopping list for any recipe, which you can email to yourself if you don't fancy lugging an iPad around the supermarket.

Naturally, Jamie needs money to buy his vats of olive oil and piles of lemons, and so access to all of the content costs US$1.99/£1.99 per month. But for free, there are always 15 featured taster recipes, which are regularly rotated.

We're not sure whether Slack is an amazing aid to productivity or some kind of time vampire. Probably a bit of both. What we do know is that the real-time messaging system is excellent in a work environment for chatting with colleagues (publicly and privately), sharing and previewing files, and organising discussions by topic.

There's smart integration with online services, and support for both the iPad Pro and the iPad's Split View function. Note that although Slack is clearly designed with businesses in mind, it also works perfectly well as a means of communicating with friends if you don't fancy lobbing all your worldly wisdom into Facebook's maw.

Podcasts are mostly associated with small portable devices - after all, the very name is a mash-up of 'iPod' and 'broadcast'. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your favourite shows when armed with an iPad rather than an iPhone.

We're big fans of Overcast on Apple's smaller devices, but the app makes good use of the iPad's extra screen space, with a smart two-column display. On the left, episodes are listed, and the current podcast loads into the larger space on the right.

The big plusses with Overcast, though, remain playback and podcast management. It's the one podcast app we've used that retains plenty of clarity when playback is sped up; and there are clever effects for removing dead air and boosting vocals in podcasts with lower production values.

Playlists can be straightforward in nature, or quite intricate, automatically boosting favourites to the top of the list, and excluding specific episodes. And if you do mostly use an iPhone for listening, Overcast automatically syncs your podcasts and progress, so you can always pick up where you left off.

If you delve into browser developer tools, the size of web pages these days is astonishing. Frequently, the actual content isn't weighty, but associated ads and tracking scripts are. Moreover, content is often a tiny letterbox surrounded by a sea of ads, and you might not have time to read anything right now anyway.

Instapaper is designed to place content front and centre, and be there whenever you want to read it. You visit a site and send the URL to Instapaper, or share to Instapaper from the likes of a Twitter client. Instapaper then dutifully pulls down text and imagery for later.

The main view is stripped-back, clutter-free and very readable, with plentiful options regarding typography. An optional monthly/annual premium subscription adds full text-search, text-to-speech highlights, send-to-Kindle, and more, but the free version should suffice for most users.

We're big fans of Duolingo on iPhone. Its bite-size exercises are perfect for quickly dipping into, when you've a spare moment to tackle a bit of language-learning. On iPad, the app is basically the same, and the screen's relative acres make everything feel a touch sparse.

However, Duolingo remains the same impressive and approachable app, and the iPad's form-factor lends itself to more extended sessions, which is great for when you want to properly crack the next challenge the app throws your way. As ever, we remain baffled that this app remains entirely free. We've yet to find the catch.

Learning a musical instrument isn't easy, which is probably why a bunch of people don't bother, instead pretending to be rock stars by way of tiny plastic instruments and their parent videogames. Yousician bridges the divide, flipping a kind of Guitar Hero interface 90 degrees and using its visual and timing devices to get you playing chords and notes.

This proves remarkably effective, and your iPad merrily keeps track of your skills (or lack thereof) through its internal mic. The difficulty curve is slight, but the app enables you to skip ahead if you're bored, through periodic 'test' rounds. Most surprisingly, for free you get access to everything, only your daily lesson time is limited.

Maybe it's just our tech-addled brains, but often we find it a lot easier to focus on an app than a book, which can make learning things the old fashioned way tricky. That's where Khan Academy comes in. This free app contains lessons and guidance on dozens of subjects, from algebra, to cosmology, to computer science and beyond.

As it's an app rather than a book it benefits from videos and even a few interactive elements, alongside words and pictures and it contains over 10,000 videos and explanations in all. Everything is broken in to bite-sized chunks, so whether you've got a few minutes to spare or a whole afternoon there's always time to learn something new and if you make an account it will keep track of your progress and award achievements.

As you launch Kitchen Stories, you catch a glimpse of the app's mantra: "Anyone can cook". The problem is, most cooking apps (and indeed, traditional cookery books) make assumptions regarding people's abilities.

Faced with a list of steps on a stark white page, it's easy to get halfway through a recipe, look at the stodge in front of you, reason something must have gone terribly wrong, and order a takeaway.

Kitchen Stories offers firmer footing. You're first met with a wall of gorgeous photography. More importantly, the photographs don't stop.

Every step in a recipe is accompanied by a picture that shows how things should be at that point. Additionally, some recipes provide tutorial videos for potentially tricky skills and techniques. Fancy some Vietnamese pho, but not sure how to peel ginger, prepare a chilli or thinly slice meat? Kitchen Stories has you covered.

Beyond this, there's a shopping list, handy essentials guide, and some magazine-style articles to peruse. And while you don't get the sheer range of recipes found in some rival apps, the presentation more than makes up for that — especially on the iPad, which will likely find a new home in your own kitchen soon after Kitchen Stories is installed.

On opening Toca Nature, you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.

Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.

Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.

The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.

The fairly large screen of the iPad means you can access desktop-style websites, rather than ones hacked down for iPhone. That sounds great until you realise most of them want to fire adverts into your face until you beg for mercy.

Old people will wisely suggest 'RSS', and then they'll explain that means you can subscribe to sites and get their content piped into an app.

Reeder 3 is a great RSS reader for iPad. It's fast, efficient, caches content for offline use and — importantly — bundles a Readability view. This downloads entire articles for RSS feeds that otherwise would only show synopses.

Like on the iPhone, Reeder's perhaps a bit gesture-happy, but it somehow feels more usable on the iPad's larger display. And we're happy to see the app continue to improve its feature set, including Split View and iPad Pro support, font options for the article viewer, and the means to sync across Instapaper content.

It says something about the flexibility of LumaFX that we initially thought it broken during review. It wasn't — we'd in fact accidentally applied so many effects to a video that it ended up looking like a nightmarish Eastern European animation from 1977. We weren't counting on a video app enabling rapid layering of advanced effects just by blithely tapping away, you see.

But that's LumaFX in a nutshell — it makes mucking around with videos almost laughably simple. You can crop and fit videos in various ways, reorient those that are the wrong way round, change their speeds, adjust colours, and fiddle about with that effects catalogue. There are vignettes, blurs, and weird pixelation effects, all of which render almost absurdly quickly. It's all rather brilliant.

Given the sheer photo-editing power available for nothing in Google's excellent Snapseed, paid apps in this space need to be something special.

Enlight covers all the basics, much as you'd expect, with a range of tools for cropping, making adjustments, adding filters, and so on. Where it excels is in shooting for a more artistic and professional approach.

From an art standpoint, you get a bunch of painterly and classic film filters that really look the part. When it comes to professional retouching, you can process up to 50MP images on an iPad Pro, work with noise reduction, freeze areas of images when transforming them, and precision-mask any effect.

The first time you try any tool, a tutorial leads you through the process, but on the whole Enlight has the kind of interface that's easy to click with.

The destructive nature of effects and editing is a pity - you can't later adjust something you changed a while ago, only undo. But that's the only niggle in this otherwise excellent photo editor for iPad.

Although Apple introduced iCloud Keychain in iOS 7, designed to securely store passwords and payment information, 1Password is a more powerful system. Along with integrating with Safari, it can be used to hold identities, secure notes, network information and app licence details. It's also cross-platform, meaning it will work with Windows and Android.

And since 1Password is a standalone app, accessing and editing your information is fast and efficient. The core app is free (the company primarily makes its money on the desktop), although you will need to pay a one-off $9.99/£7.99 IAP to access advanced features (multiple vaults, Apple Watch support, tagging, and custom fields).

The vast majority of iPads in Apple's line-up don't have a massive amount of storage, and that becomes a problem when you want to keep videos on the device. Air Video HD gets around the problem by streaming video files from any Mac or PC running the free server software. All content is live-encoded as necessary, ensuring it will play on your iPad, and there's full support for offline viewing, soft subtitles, and AirPlay to an Apple TV.

Perhaps the best bit about the software is how usable it is. The app's simple to set up and has a streamlined, modern interface - for example, a single tap downloads a file for local storage. You don't even need to be on the same network as your server either - Air Video HD lets you access your content over the web. Just watch your data downloads if you're on 3G!

Although there are more powerful text editors available for iPad (such as Editorial and Ulysses), Byword is where it's at if you just want a no-nonsense distraction-free writing environment that lets you get on with writing.

The subdued interface and typewriter-style font feel resolutely old-school, but there are nods to modern working by way of Markdown support (assisted by a custom keyboard row) and live word/character count. For anyone publishing to the web, a single $3.99/£2.99 IAP provides integration with the likes of WordPress and Tumblr.

Drum machines are always a lot of fun, but many of those available for iOS are rather throwaway, their options exhausted within minutes. DM1 is pretty much the exact opposite, packed with a huge number of drum kits, a step sequencer, a song composer and a mixer.

The bundled sounds are extremely varied, ranging from acoustic kits to thoroughly modern ear-monstering electronic samples. And the option to switch between live play (by way of bashing pads) and step-writing is welcome. Inter-App audio, Audiobus and MIDI support also ensure what you create doesn't end up in a percussion-rich silo.

Dropbox is a great service for syncing documents across multiple devices, and chances are you're familiar with it already. On the iPad, we used to consider Dropbox essential as a kind of surrogate file system.

Even now that Apple's provided easier access to iCloud Drive, Dropbox remains a useful install, largely on the basis of its widespread support (both in terms of platforms and also iOS apps). The Dropbox app itself works nicely, too, able to preview a large number of file types, and integrating well with iOS for sending documents to and from the various apps you have installed.

Although you get the sense eBay's designers can't get through a month without redesigning their app, it's always far superior to using the online auction site in a browser.

eBay for iOS works especially well on an iPad, with images looking great on the larger screen, and browsing proving fast and efficient. Speedy sorting and filtering options also make it a cinch to get to listings for whatever it is you fancy buying.

In a sense Evernote is an online back-up for fleeting thoughts and ideas. You use it to save whatever comes to mind - text documents and snippets, notes, images, web clips, and even audio. These can then be accessed from a huge number of devices. (We suspect any day now, Evernote will unveil its ZX Spectrum app.)

The app itself could be friendlier, and there's a tendency towards clutter. But navigation of your stored bits and pieces is simple enough, and the sheer ubiquity and reliability of Evernote makes it worthy of investigation and a place on your home screen.

Apple's own Calendar app is fiddly and irritating, and so the existence of Fantastical is very welcome. In a single screen, you get a week view, a month calendar and a scrolling list of events. There's also support for reminders, and all data syncs with iCloud, making Fantastical compatible with Calendar (formerly iCal) for OS X.

The best bit, though, is Fantastical's natural-language input, where you can type an event and watch it build as you add details, such as times and locations. On iPad, we do question the layout a little - a large amount of space is given over to a month calendar view. Still, in portrait or, better, Split View, Fantastical 2 is transformative.

Apple's GarageBand turns your iPad into a recording studio. For beginners, there's a range of smart instruments, making it easy to learn the basics of songwriting and chord progression. You can also experiment with pre-recorded loops, including in the loop player, where you trigger riffs and drum beats with a tap of your fingers.

If you're already a musical sort, GarageBand enables you to write directly into a sequencer or record any instrument live. The app can also act as a kind of hub for other iOS music software, tying your apps together through Inter-App Audio and Audiobus.

GoodReader is the iPad's best PDF reader, and also a means of editing documents on the move. Using the app's excellent toolset, you can annotate documents and extract text. Pages within documents can be rearranged, and files split and combined.

Beyond working specifically with PDF, the app will preview many other file types, and includes the ability to archive and extract ZIPs, and connect to a wide range of online services. It therefore goes far beyond the likes of iBooks, becoming a handy tool for anyone who regularly works with PDFs and sends them on elsewhere.

You're not going to make the next Hollywood hit on your iPad, but iMovie's more than capable of dealing with home movies. The interface resembles its desktop cousin and is easy to get to grips with. Clips can be browsed, arranged and cut, and you can then add titles, transitions and music. For the added professional touch, there are 'trailer templates' to base your movie on, rather than starting from scratch.

And should your iPad be powerful enough, this app will happily work with and export footage all the way up to 4K, which will likely make anyone who used to sit in front of huge video workstations a decade or two ago wide-eyed with astonishment.

There's something fascinating about animation, and iStopMotion is a powerful and usable app for unleashing your inner Aardman, enabling you to create frame-by-frame stories. The camera overlay makes it easy to check your current scene against the previous one, and you can preview your work at any time.

There's also time-lapse functionality built-in, and the means to use the free iStopMotion Remote Camera with an iPhone on the same network.

If you're still convinced the iPad is only a device for staring brain-dead at TV shows and not a practical tool for education, check out iTunes U. The app enables you to access many thousands of free lectures and courses taught by universities and colleges, thereby learning far more than what bizarre schemes current soap characters are hatching.

For instructors, it's similarly a boon, enabling them to build lessons, collect and grade assignments, and have one-to-one or group discussions. It's also an app that gels well with Apple's modern design sensibilities, the interface getting out of the way and letting content shine through.

Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.

Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.

What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.

The idea behind Launch Center Pro is to take certain complex actions and turn them into tappable items — a kind of speed-dial for tasks such as adding items to Clear, opening a URL in 1Password, or opening a specific view in Google Maps. Although the list of supported apps isn't huge, it's full of popular productivity apps; and should you use any of them on a regular basis, Launch Center Pro will be a massive time-saver and is well worth the outlay.

It's not like Microsoft Word really needs introduction. Unless you've been living under a rock that itself is under a pretty sizeable rock, you'll have heard of Microsoft's hugely popular word processor. What you might not realize, though, is how good it is on iPad.

Fire up the app and you're greeted with a selection of handy templates, although you can of course instead use a blank canvas. You then work with something approximating the desktop version of Word, but that's been carefully optimized for tablets. Your brain keeps arguing it shouldn't exist, but it does — although things are a bit fiddly on an iPad mini.

Wisely, saved documents can be stored locally rather than you being forced to use Microsoft's cloud, and they can be shared via email. (A PDF option exists for recipients without Office, although it's oddly hidden behind the share button in the document toolbar, under 'Send Attachment', which may as well have been called 'beware of the leopard'.)

Something else that's also missing: full iPad Pro 12.9 support in the free version. On a smaller iPad, you merely need a Microsoft account to gain access to most features. Some advanced stuff — section breaks; columns; tracking changes; insertion of WordArt — requires an Office 365 account, but that won't limit most users.

Presumably, Microsoft thinks iPad Pro owners have money to burn, though, because for free they just get a viewer. Bah.

There are loads of note-taking apps for the iPad, but Notability hits that sweet spot of being usable and feature-rich. Using the app's various tools, you can scribble on a virtual canvas, using your finger or a stylus. Should you want precision copy, you can drag out text boxes to type into. It's also possible to import documents.

One of the smartest features, though, is audio recording. This enables you to record a lecture or meeting, and the app will later play back your notes live alongside the audio, helping you see everything in context. Naturally, the app has plenty of back-up and export options, too, so you can send whatever you create to other apps and devices.

We mention Microsoft's iPad efforts elsewhere, but if you don't fancy paying for a subscription and yet need some spreadsheet-editing joy on your iPad, Numbers is an excellent alternative. Specially optimised for Apple's tablet, Numbers makes great use of custom keyboards, smart zooming, and forms that enable you to rapidly enter data. Presentation app Keynote and page-layout app Pages are also worth a look.

For a long while, Paper was a freemium iPad take on Moleskine sketchbooks. You made little doodles and then flipped virtual pages to browse them. At some point, it went free, but now it's been transformed into something different and better. The original tools remain present and correct, but are joined by the means to add text, checklists, and photos. One other newcomer allows geometric shapes you scribble to be tidied up, but without losing their character.

So rather than only being for digital sketches, Paper's now for all kinds of notes and graphs, too. The sketchbooks, however, are gone; in their place are paper stacks that explode into walls of virtual sticky notes. Some old-hands have grumbled, but we love the new Paper. It's smarter, simpler, easier to browse, and makes Apple's own Notes look like a cheap knock-off.

PCalc Lite's existence means the lack of a built-in iPad calculator doesn't bother us. For anyone who wants a traditional calculator, it's pretty much ideal. The big buttons beg to be tapped, and the interface can be tweaked to your liking, by way of bolder and larger key text, alternate display digits, and stilling animation.

Beyond basic sums, PCalc Lite adds some conversions, which are categorised but also searchable. If you're hankering for more, IAP lets you bolt on a number of extras from the paid version of PCalc, such as additional themes, dozens more conversions, alternate calculator layouts, a virtual paper tape, and options for programmers and power users.

Whereas most digital comic stores deluge you with content, Sequential has a slightly different take on the medium. It feels rather more upmarket, serious and considered, concentrating on interesting and often more thoughtful graphic novels, rather than individual issues of throwaway superhero fare.

That probably all comes across like Sequential is a bit 'worthy'. But in reality it just means that whatever you spend your money on is likely to be of a high quality. The app itself is, fortunately, decent too, offering a strong reading experience for whatever's in your collection.

We tend to quickly shift children from finger-painting to using much finer tools, but the iPad shows there's plenty of power in your digits — if you're using the right app. Autodesk SketchBook provides all the tools you need for digital sketching, from basic doodles through to intricate and painterly masterpieces; and if you're wanting to share your technique, you can even time-lapse record to save drawing sessions to your camera roll. The core app is free, but it will cost you $4.99 / £3.99 to unlock the pro features.

In theory, we should be cheerleading for FaceTime, what with it being built into iOS devices, but it's still an Apple-only system. Skype, however, is enjoyed by myriad users who haven't been bitten by the Apple bug, and it works very nicely on the iPad, including over 3G.

Unlike on the iPhone, where Skype clearly wants to be a Windows Phone app, the iPad version feels a lot more like a restrained desktop app. Usefully, Skype works well in Split View, too, so you can message people while referring to an open document or web page.

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed. Here, you select from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image. You get all the basics — cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like - but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app also records applied effects as separate layers, each of which remains fully editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else.

Soulver is more or less the love child of a spreadsheet and the kind of calculations you do on the back of an envelope. You write figures in context, and Souvler extracts the maths bits and tots up totals; each line's results can be used as a token in subsequent lines, enabling live updating of complex calculations. Drafts can be saved, exported to HTML, and also synced via Dropbox or iCloud.

Initially, the app feels a bit alien, given that people have been used to digital versions of desktop calculators since the dawn of home computing. But scribbling down sums in Soulver soon becomes second nature.

TED describes itself as "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world". The app pretty much does as you'd expect – you get quick access to dozens of inspiring videos. However, it goes the extra mile in enabling you to save any talk for offline viewing, and also for providing hints on what to watch next if you've enjoyed a particular talk.

Traktor DJ wisely dispenses with skeuomorphic representations of deck-spinning; instead of virtual vinyl on your iPad, you get waveforms, providing visual cues regarding what you're playing. The app is efficient and simple to use, enabling you to define cue points and loops, along with dropping in effects; helpfully, Traktor DJ also attempts to tempo-match songs from your iPad library. It's a very different approach to iPad DJing, but one that works wonderfully.

When the YouTube app presumably became a victim of the ongoing and increasingly tedious Apple/Google spat, there were concerns Google wouldn't respond. Those turned out to be unfounded, because here's yet another bespoke, nicely designed Google-created app for iOS. The interface is specifically tuned for the iPad, and AirPlay enables you to fire videos at an Apple TV.

We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.

But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.

When someone talks about bringing back the sounds of the 1980s, your head might fill with Human League and Depeche Mode, but if you played games, you'll instead think of Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway, chip-tune pioneers whose music graced the C64, leveraging the power of the MOS Technology 6581/8580 SID (Sound Interface Device) chip.

SidTracker64 is a niche but wonderfully designed iPad app that's a complete production package for creating SID tunes. It's unashamedly retro in terms of sound, but boasts a modern design, with powerful editing and export functionality. If you're only into raw chip-tune noises, Audiobus and Inter-App Audio are supported; but if you're an old-hand, you'll be delighted at the bundled copy of Hubbard's Commando, ready for you to remix.

It's been a long time coming, but finally Tweetbot gets a full-fledged modern-day update for iPad. And it's a good one, too. While the official Twitter app's turned into a 'blown-up iPhone app' monstrosity on Apple's tablet, Tweetbot makes use of the extra space by way of a handy extra column in which you can stash mentions, lists, and various other bits and bobs.

Elsewhere, this latest release might lack a few toys Twitter selfishly keeps for itself, but it wins out in terms of multitasking support, granular mute settings, superb usability, and an interesting Activity view if you're the kind of Twitter user desperate to know who's retweeting all your tiny missives.

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Best VPN for Mac: Our 5 top choices

Mac users can get somewhat complacent about security, but they shouldn’t – Apple’s desktop computers are being increasingly targeted by cybercriminals, and it never pays to let your guard down. Certainly, as well as competent antivirus, folks with a Mac need a quality Virtual Private Network just as much as anyone on Windows – although not every VPN service provides a client or satisfactory support for macOS users. However, if you’re stuck as to which provider to go with, help is at hand…

How to choose the best VPN for Mac

It’s not always easy to find a Mac-friendly VPN service. Obviously enough, it’s important to choose a provider that offers a pre-configured client for its service. Having a good Mac client is a huge boon in terms of simply making things as easy as possible. Solid iOS support is also a welcome feature if you’re heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem and have an iPhone as well as a Mac.

Next, you need powerful security with strong encryption, which goes without saying, and an easily understandable privacy policy that makes it perfectly clear what data is kept by the provider. Good performance levels obviously don’t hurt, either. Below are the five best VPN services for Mac that we've picked out for you.

• We’ve also highlighted the best antivirus software for your Mac

ExpressVPN is our top choice for the best all-round VPN service on the Mac. The dedicated app is intuitive and very user-friendly, featuring a one-click option for connecting, as well as some advanced options. It uses 256-bit OpenVPN encryption both over UDP and TCP protocols and comes with a kill switch.

There’s also a very good iOS app so you get a complete Apple VPN experience. Great speeds, a favourable privacy policy and 24/7 customer support rounds off an excellent Mac VPN experience.

Nevertheless, the pricing slightly tarnishes things. The service is a tad pricier than most other VPN providers, with no free trial – but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. ExpressVPN offers three price plans, with the 12-month plan offering the best value. The packages available are:

• [$12.95 a month] 1-month
• [$9.99 a month] 6-months - $59.95
• [$8.32 a month] 12-months - $99.95
• Download ExpressVPN for Mac here

When it comes to security, NordVPN does it like no other. Its own ‘Double VPN’ technology encrypts data twice – in other words, it passes your data through two separate VPN servers to make things even more secure – while there are additional security extras such as encrypted chat, web proxy extensions and so on.

NordVPN’s clients for both macOS and iOS are rather basic compared to others, but keeping things simple can be advantageous for novices. This provider is also P2P-friendly and has a strict zero logs policy, which makes it perfect for those seeking an ultra-secure and private experience. The performance was slightly above average in our testing, too.

There is no free trial, but the good news is that NordVPN is a relatively affordable service. There are three plans available with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The 1-year plan is the most popular choice (although currently, there’s a limited time offer for a 2-year plan that boasts the best savings). The packages available are:

• [$11.95 a month] 1-month
• [$7.00 a month] 6-months - $42.00
• [$5.75 a month] 1-year - $69.00
• [$3.29 a month] 2-years - $79.00
• Download NordVPN for Mac here

IPVanish’s Mac app features a nifty design and a few welcome options like a kill switch and automatic IP switching. The service is blazingly fast, and it’ll automatically hook you up to the fastest server available, a nice touch on the convenience front. Not only are download speeds fast with this VPN, it allows P2P.

OpenVPN, PPTP and L2TP protocols are supported, and there’s also decent iOS support and a wide coverage of servers, with no logging of the user’s activities.

However, you pay for the performance you get here. IPVanish doesn’t have a free trial, although there is a 7-day money-back guarantee with all three available plans. The 1-year subscription is clearly the best choice. The packages available are:

• [$10.00 a month] 1-month
• [$8.99 a month] 3-months - $26.99
• [$6.49 a month] 1-year - $77.90
• Download IPVanish for Mac here

KeepSolid VPN Unlimited has all the right ingredients in optimal quantities. Its native Mac client is well-designed, and you can pick up nifty extras like a personal server or a personal static IP. The service also offers solid iOS support and doesn’t store any user information on the privacy front.

Performance varied a bit during testing, but overall it was solid enough, doing well on downloads but with things slowing up a bit more on uploads. And the choice of servers isn’t as extensive as some VPNs.

The pricing plans are a story of their own. There’s six of them and they all represent good value for money, ranging from a weekly plan to a permanent ‘forever’ subscription. The 3-year plan offers the best savings – and don’t forget you can avail yourself of a 7-day free trial to test the service out. The packages available are:

• [$1.99 a week] 1-week
• [$4.99 a month] 1-month
• [$3.00 a month] 3-months - $9
• [$2.08 a month] 1-year - $24.95
• [$1.94 a month] 3-years - $69.85
• Forever - $129.99
• Download KeepSolid VPN Unlimited for Mac here

Our best balanced option for the Mac is Hotspot Shield. First and foremost, it boasts speedy performance levels, actually increasing both our upload and download speeds once connected (although your mileage may vary). The client is pretty straightforward to use, although don’t expect much in the way of more advanced configuration options.

There aren’t a huge range of options in terms of server coverage, either, but the service comes with benefits like cloud-based malware protection, and a favourable privacy policy (any information which might be recorded is deleted when your VPN session closes).

Another strong point of Hotspot Shield is the pricing. It currently offers five subscription plans, including a ‘forever’ option. Unless you want to commit to the latter, the overall best bet is the 2-year plan which is extremely affordable. The packages available are:

• [$11.95 a month] 1-month
• [$3.33 a month] 6-months - $19.00
• [$2.50 a month] 1-year - $29.95
• [$2.08 a month] 2-years - $49.95
• Forever - $99.95
• Download Hotspot Shield here

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WhatsApp will soon let you track your friends

A number of interesting new features have been spotted in the WhatsApp beta for iOS and Android recently, one of which appears to be live location tracking.

It appears that the Live Location feature will display your real-time location to those you chat to in groups using WhatsApp. The feature was spotted by Twitter user WABetaInfo, although exactly where your location will be made visible isn’t clear.

Naturally, a feature like this has the potential to raise concerns with regards to privacy. To address these concerns, the Live Location feature will be disabled until the user manually opts in via the app’s settings menu. 

Just think of all the fibs and lame excuses that could be exposed if this wasn’t the case – all those people who tell you they’re five minutes away when they haven’t left the house yet would be rumbled.

In or out

Those who don’t want to have their location constantly on display (that’ll be the majority of users we imagine), but who would find the feature useful in certain scenarios, will have the option to enable the feature for a limited window of one, two or five minutes. 

This isn’t the only interesting feature that’s been spotted in the app’s Android beta. There are also reports that we could soon see the ability to edit messages we’ve sent, as well as recall messages you wish you hadn’t sent at all. 

It would only be possible to edit or recall messages that haven’t been read, though, so you’ll still have to live with those mid-conversation regrets – at least until WhatsApp develops a memory-wiping feature.

Although these features have been spotted in the beta it’s not clear when they’ll be rolled out, or whether they’ll be rolled out exactly as they appear in the beta. 

• 10 brilliant WhatsApp tips and tricks

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The best VPN services and VPN deals of 2017

If you haven't purchased or downloaded a VPN client yet, that might well be one of the best things you will do in 2017: VPNs are available on desktops, mobiles and even other devices like routers.

We'll be sure to regularly update this page as we get new VPN offers coming through from our global network of 220+ VPN providers.live at the time of writing but may be expired by the time you look at them.

Note that they are valid worldwide and not all providers offer pound sterling as a transaction currency. We update this article every week as we get new VPN offers coming through from our global network of 220+ VPN partners.

Choose the best VPN service

VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) work by creating a secure, encrypted connection between your devices and a VPN server from a service provider (there are dozens of them to choose, from all over the world).

Anything you do online - sites you're visiting, emails you send or receive, files you download, web forms you complete - passes through that secure tunnel and can't be intercepted by anyone else (unless one of these servers - or your own computer - is compromised, but that's another story).

Below are the top five VPN services that we've picked out for you. This list is regularly updated so is subject to change.

If you want to try these VPN services before or don't want to pay (but still need to use that service), then check our guide to best free VPN services.

[57% Off] IPVanish (Official Promotion) - Get up to 57% Off Tech Radar's #1 Rated VPN Service. IPVanish's Top-Tier Network Delivered the Fastest Speeds in Our Tests. Zero Logs Gives You Total Privacy.

While many VPN providers try to stand out with their free plans and cheap commercial products, IPVanish talks more about service quality. It's "the world's fastest VPN" says the website, boasting 40,000+ shared IPs, 500+ VPN servers in 60+ countries, unlimited P2P traffic, five simultaneous connections and more.

The price is still going to be an issue for some – it is more expensive than the average VPN, but IPVanish's high speeds, choice of locations and excellent client are hard to beat. If you're after quality, take the plunge with this VPN, and if somehow you end up unhappy with the service there's a 7-day money-back guarantee.

IPVanish has three service options available and it is, unsurprisingly, its 1-year subscription that wins the day. Note that you will be billed in USD and the price displayed on the right is the approximate Pound Sterling conversion at the time of publishing. Other packages are available below:

• [£4.23 a month] 1-year - $62.31 (US) or £50.67 (UK)
• [£5.85 a month] 3-months - $21.57 (US) or £17.54 (UK)
• [£6.49 a month] 1-month - $7.98 (US) or £6.49 (UK)

If you want the absolute best VPN service, check out AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield Elite. It is, in our view, the one that manages to provide all the necessary features at an attractive price with the option of getting a lifetime license. It supports private browsing, virtual locations, allows "access all content", and supports up to five devices.

Performance results in our tests were excellent, with latency showing only a marginal increase, and both upload and download speeds were a little faster once connected. 

We'd like more configurability and a wider range of locations, but Hotspot Shield Elite's high speeds and low prices have a lot of appeal, and the 7-day trial makes it easy to test the service for yourself.

Anchordesk has only one service option available and it is a 1-year subscription. Note that you will be billed in USD and the price displayed on the right is the approximate Pound Sterling conversion at the time of publishing. Other available packages are listed below:

• [£0.01 per month] Forever, 1 user - £63.95
• [£1.33 per month] 2-years, 1 user - £31.95
• [£1.58 per month] 1-year, 1 user - £18.95
• [£2.16 per month] 6-months, 1-user - £12.95
• [£7.95 per month] 1-month, 1-user - £7.95

Some companies take a one-size-fits-all approach to VPNs, offering the bare minimum of products, but KeepSolid's VPN Unlimited is different. Very, very different. Forget the usual two or three plans: VPN Unlimited offers six, plus there's a 7-day free trial to get you started (and also a 7-day money-back guarantee for a little extra security).

VPN Unlimited's PC client opens with a clear overview of the service state. Your real and virtual IPs are displayed as addresses and plotted on a map, and the number of days left on your current plan is visible at a glance. Its choice of servers is less than some but for a more general purpose VPN, the service does very well.

Keepsolid's VPN Unlimited has a whopping six service options available, ranging all the way from 7-day to Infinity (i.e. VPN for life). 

Note that you will be billed in USD and the price displayed on the right is the approximate Pound Sterling conversion at the time of publishing for its best value-for-money package, the 1-year subscription offer. Other packages are available below:

• [£0.01 a month] Unlimited personal VPN server - £406
• [£0.01 a month] Unlimited - £105.71
• [£1.58 a month] 3-years - £56.92
• [£1.69 a month] 1-year - £20.32
• [£2.44 a month] 3-months - £7.31
• [£4.06 a month] 1-month -£4.06
• [£7.01 a month] 7-days - £1.62

> Exclusive NordVPN offer: Get a massive discount off RRP when you buy two years worth of Nord VPN service for only $79, that's only $3.29 per month. Get this exclusive VPN offer from NordVPN. 

Despite being based in a country located in Central America - hardly a tech hub - NordVPN's current products match or beat the competition in just about every area. 

685 servers in 52 countries, 2048-bit encryption, 6-device support as standard, strong DNS leak protection, automatic Kill Switch, handy security extras, optional dedicated IP addresses, and payment options including Bitcoin, PayPal and credit cards.

Performance was good, too, with download speeds around 95% of our typical rate. Latency and upload speeds weren't as impressive at 197% and 40% of the regular rates, but overall our system still felt relatively snappy and responsive.

NordVPN has three service options available and its most popular and by far best value offer is the 1-year subscription. 

Note that you will be billed in USD and the price displayed on the right - for the 1-year subscription - is the approximate Pound Sterling conversion at the time of publishing.   Other packages are available below:

• [£4.68 a month] 1-year - £56.11
• [£5.69 a month] 6-months - £34.15
• [£9.72 a month] 1-month - £9.72

> Exclusive Pure VPN deal: Only for Techradar readers is PureVPN's jaw dropping VPN offer. Buy one year of PureVPN service with a 40% discount (effective price is $49) and get another additional year for free. Get it now at: PureVPN. 

PureVPN's PC client stands out immediately for the sheer volume of connection options and tools it makes available. Its policy on logging is unusually clear: the company records the time you connect to a server and the total bandwidth used, but otherwise there are no logs of the websites you visit, the files you download or anything else.

PureVPN did well on our performance tests, where amazingly it managed to improve most of our download speeds. Latency was a mere 5% higher than normal, upload speeds actually increased by 4%, while downloads were a very surprising 80% up on our normal speeds.

The provides offers three service options but it is its two-year package which is the best value for money across board. It doesn't sell one-year subscription bundles.

Note that the company offers a 5% discount if you pay by credit card and you will be billed in USD and the price displayed on the right is the approximate Pound Sterling conversion at the time of publishing.  Other packages are available below: 

• [£2.45 a month] 12-months, 1 account - £47.82
• [£3.64 a month] 6-months, 1 account - £43.67
• [£4.95 a month] 1-month, 1 account - £4.95

What is a VPN?

VPN is one of those tech terms and has gained a lot of traction in recent years as the internet has diversified and grown to even bigger levels.  However, the premise is actually quite simple, and there are some great use cases.

It stands for ‘virtual private networking’, which is a popular internet security method. The latter involves technologies that aim to add a layer of security to both private and public networks. These include broadband and internet hotspots.

If there’s one worry when it comes to using technology and the internet, it’s privacy. By using a VPN, you can, in theory, prevent your internet service provider (ISP) and government from seeing your internet history.

VPNs have also emerged as a popular tool in the freedom of speech movement. You’re able to avoid censorship within organisations and from third-parties. For example, if you have a view that goes against the priorities of your employer, you don’t have to worry about them finding out.

People also use VPN technology to “geo-spoof” their location. This results in users customising their location settings to be able to use overseas services. A great example of this is watching a TV programme or online product that’s only available in a specific country, perhaps due to legal or licensing issues.

You can resort to a VPN to protect yourself from hackers too. If you’re outside and sign up to use a public internet hotspot - perhaps in a cafe or library - there is the chance someone could try to break into your device. This can lead to you losing valuable data, such as passwords. 

This technology is also emerging as a popular force in the world of business. When you’re traveling  around for meetings all the time, it’s normal to connect to third-party networks. With a VPN, you can access your firm’s intranet without the worry of being targeted by cyber criminals.
 

Proxy vs. VPN

Proxies are also popular, and there’s always the question about how they differ from VPNs. The aim of both methods is to protect users’ identities or to spoof a location. While they are different technologies, many VPN providers also offer proxies. 

A proxy is type of computing system that functions as a go-between for your connected device and your web connection. These servers also have their own IP addresses, so transfers can’t be traced directly to your computer. 

They may share common aims with VPNs, but typically, they only secure a torrent client or browser. Using a VPN, you can encrypt 100% of your internet connection, so there’s more protection.  

Free vs. Paid VPN: Which is better?

VPNs used to be a premium product, but you don't have to spend big money on them anymore. Some companies now offer a basic service that won't cost you anything at all.

As you'd expect, there are catches, and they typically start with a data cap. Avira Phantom VPN's free plan limits you to 500MB a month, PrivateTunnel offers 2GB, whereas ZPN has a generous 10GB allowance - not bad at all.

Free products also typically have usage restrictions. Most companies don't want you to soak up all their bandwidth on torrents, so ZPN is typical in blocking P2P.

Hide.me's 2GB free plan also has some common limits. There's "best effort" bandwidth, which means paying customers have speed priority and you get what's left. And the choice of locations is limited to three: Canada, Netherlands and Singapore.

Hola's free-for-personal-use plan doesn't have the same kind of restrictions, but even here there's a catch. The service routes traffic through its free users rather than dedicated servers, so signing up allows others to (securely) share a small part of your bandwidth and resources.

Then there's the adverts and the session limits (CyberGhost) and the general lack of service level agreement: free means that it doesn't come with any implicit warranties.

Free plans are fine for simple needs, then - maybe protecting your laptop's wireless hotspot traffic on the occasional trip - but if you're looking for anything more advanced, a commercial product is best.

The immediate benefit is that you know your personal data remains safe, even if you're on a public Wi-Fi hotspot. Local snoopers might be able to see the connection, but there's no way to find out what it is or where it's going.

VPNs also give you a new digital identity in the shape of an IP address from another country. This makes it harder for websites or anyone else to track you, allows some people to bypass government censorship, and helps the rest of us avoid those "not available in your country" messages on YouTube or other streaming sites.

Best of all, despite the low-level network technology involved, you don't need to be any kind of expert to make VPNs work. For the most part, all you have to do is choose the country where you'd like an IP address, click Connect to start, Disconnect when you're done - and that's it.

How to choose a VPN: Here are 6 tips

There are several factors to consider when you're choosing a paid VPN.

1. Does the plan have servers in every country and region you need? Having more than one server in a country can help spread the load, but doesn't guarantee improved performance, so don't assume a plan with 500 servers will automatically beat another with 100.

2. Check the number of simultaneous connections supported. Typically, this is 3-5, which allows you to have a PC, mobile and tablet connected at the same time. But beware, many companies say this is for a single user only, and they all have fair usage policies to prevent people hogging resources. If you let the entire family download and stream videos separately then you'll run into trouble.

3. Some providers list the connection protocols they use. OpenVPN and IKeV2 are good choices, fast and secure. You might see SSTP and the older PPTP, as well as protocol options (TCP or UDP for OpenVPN). You don't need to understand the low-level details, but having the extra choice can help the service make faster and/or more reliable connections.

4. All VPN companies say they don't log whatever you're doing online, but inevitably they collect a little data. Some services record the day your account logged on, the amount of data you used, and delete anything else when the session closes. Others add items like your incoming IP address and the server you used, and keep the data for months, even years. If you're concerned, check the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to find out more.

5. It's important to consider the client, the software which handles your connections. These all have a list of servers and a Connect/ Disconnect button, but could you use more? Some clients display server load and ping time in the interface, helping you choose the right server. Regular users might appreciate a "Favourites" system to save and recall specific servers. If you know what you're doing, having access to low-level network settings will help you tune the whole system.

6. Finally, there's the price. Beware of apparently cheap deals: these may have restricted features, exclude taxes, be discounted for the first billing period only, and renew automatically, so that apparent one-off £3.99 might become almost £10 next month. Look for a 'Pricing' link, read the small print, and if possible use something like PayPal where it's easy to check and cancel a subscription yourself.

Once you've found what looks like a good VPN candidate, be sure to take it for a trial before you spend any big money. But a short trial can only tell you so much, so once that's expired, pay for a month, run as many tests as you can, then upgrade to a better value plan (usually yearly) if you're still happy.

How to test a VPN

Our comparisons started by looking at each provider's range of plans. We were looking for features, value, and clear and honest pricing. Free ways to learn more about a service - free plans, trial periods, refund periods - were important, and we also looked for companies which maintained your privacy when you signed up (no email address required, trials available without credit cards, Bitcoin available as a payment option).

The official product pages never tell you everything you need to know, so head off to the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions pages to find the real details. Does the company log more data than you'd expect, or keep it for a long time? When might it share information with others? Are there any restrictions on who can sign up? (Some providers say you must be 18 or over, or that the service is for personal, non-commercial use only.) Any other catches?

VPN performance is difficult to measure as there are so many variables, but we used multiple techniques to try and get a feel for each service's abilities. We first used speedtest.net to measure the latency, upload and download speeds for a distant connection (typically UK to California), repeated the test immediately with the VPN turned off, and looked at any changes.

We followed this up with a much shorter connection (typically UK to Netherlands) to see a more typical peak performance, ran a second benchmark to confirm our results, and ran some general browsing tests - including streaming HD video - to look for other problems.

VPNs will always give you a new IP address, but some services may have DNS or other leaks which give clues about your identity. We visited IPLeak.net and other privacy sites to look for problems.

In terms of the client and interface, we were looking for good server selection tools (by country, region, server, speed, with filters, a Favourites system, perhaps with server load or ping time displayed), with plenty of configuration options, but also a client which stays out of the way until it's needed.

Finally, we weighed up these individual factors, came up with an overall score, and narrowed these down to the 10 best VPNs around. All the software in the top five scored at least 70 points out of 100.

• [57% Off] IPVanish (Official Promotion) - Get up to 57% Off Tech Radar's #1 Rated VPN Service. IPVanish's Top-Tier Network Delivered the Fastest Speeds in Our Tests. Zero Logs Gives You Total Privacy.
• Exclusive NordVPN offer: Get a massive discount off RRP when you buy two years worth of Nord VPN service for only $79, that's only $3.29 per month. Get this exclusive VPN offer from NordVPN.
• Exclusive VyprVPN Deal: For TechRadar readers only, get 40% off VyprVPN annual plans ($60 USD for 1 year). VyprVPN is a fast, highly secure VPN without third parties. Get VyprVPN.
• Exclusive Zenmate deal: Just for Techradar readers is ZenMate's mega VPN deal offer. Buy one year of Zenmate service with a 40% discount (effective price is £29.99). Get it now at: Zenmate.
• Exclusive Invisible Browsing VPN deal: Crafted for the Techradar audience, IBVPN will give 70% off to those who buy its Ultimate VPN package (VPN + SmartDNS+ Proxy) for one year for a mere $29.95. Get it now at: Invisible Browsing Ultimate VPN.
• Exclusive Private Internet Access deal: Techradar readers get some steep discounts when they opt for a monthly, 6-monthly or a 2-year plan for $5.45, $29.95 and $59.95 respectively. Get it now at: PIA.
• **Ending 28/2** PrivateVPN is offering up to 60% off all its VPN plans when you use the coupon code PVPN50.
• **Ending 31/3** TrustZone is offering an extra 10% discount for TechRadar users who use this exclusive coupon code TECHRADAR10.
• **Ending 31/12** WiFimask has a special treat for Techradar readers. A 20% discount forever when you use the link or coupon code TECHRADAR.
• **Ending 28/2** TigerVPN has crafted a roaring offer. Take an additional 10% off from our already discounted monthly and bi-annual plan - exclusively for techradar using the voucher code TECHR10.
• **Ending 28/2** Get a 60% discount off the first year package with bVPN with prices as low as $2.99 per month.
• **Ending 30/04** OneVPN is providing our readers with a 50% straight discount on Monthly Plan exclusively for Techradar. Use the code 6W0R3VA6GD.
• **Ending 31/12** Shellfire : We here at Shellfire are thrilled to participate by offering a whopping 50% discount on all of our vpn deals exclusively for TechRadar readers.
• **Ending 31/12** VPNAsia gives a 50% discount to Techradar readers who use the coupon code WOW50OFF.
• **Ending 31/1** FlowVPN has a New Year's Special - Just $20.17 for 1-year unlimited VPN with servers in 50+ Countries! The service supports all main protocols including IPSec, PPTP and OpenVPN.
• **Ending 31/12** DoubleHop.me has a great offer for who want to try their new VPN subscription. 26% off when you add the coupon code TECHRADAR.
• **Ending 31/1** DefenceVPN is offering its P2P-friendly VPN service with a 15% discount as part of its New year promotion bundle.
• **Ending 31/1** Limited offer: VPN Unlimited users can get the Lifetime Unlimited Personal VPN Server at a 50% discount now, for only $499.99. The amount of such servers is limited. Don't miss a chance to get a personal VPN server for life!
• **Ending 1/2** Proxy.SH has a 33% discount limited in time for all TechRadar readers, courtesy of Proxy.sh, the leader in VPN encryption & transparency. Use coupon code TECHRADARFANS.
• **Ending 31/1** Exclusive VPNMaster deal is giving a 20 per cent discount to Techradar readers with the coupon code TECHRADAR. Get it now at VPNMaster.
• **Ending 28/2** Private VPN has dolled a 60% discount on all purchases when using the code PVPN60.
• Hide.me is running a promotion today for 48 hours, offering a whopping 45% off ALL its VPN plans. Get it now at Hide.me.
• VPN.SH has an exclusive offer for Techradar readers. A whole year of VPN goodness for £15. Get it now at: VPN.SH.
• **Ending 28/2** SecureVPN is giving two years of Premium VPN at the price of one. Enjoy your 100% Discount. SecureVPN provides quality connection, high speed and many countries to choose from.
• **Ending 1/3** Torguard is offering 50% off all TorGuard services when you use the coupon code TGLifetime 50.
• **Ending 15/3** With SaferVPN , Get up to 80% OFF on the fastest and simplest VPN today! This winter, pay only $3.49/mo for automatic Wi-Fi security, easy-to-use apps for every device and unlimited speed, server switching and bandwidth.
• **Ending 1/5** IntelliVPN is an optimal solution for ensuring security, privacy, and anonymity on the Internet. Enter VLBPZEJ30 at checkout to get a 30% discount.
• **Ending 1/8** Zenmate offers an exclusive 20% discount to Techradar readers. Please keep in mind that ZenMate is one of the cheaper VPNs on the market that's why this is still a great deal for your audience.
• **Ending 31/12** VPNArea is offering a special deal for Techradar users that use the coupon code techradar at checkout. Get 1 year of VPNArea.com membership for as little as $50.15. Use on up to 6 devices at the same time. Account sharing is allowed.
• **Ending 31/12** Getfoxyproxy has an exclusive Techradar deal. 80% off any plan ($1.99 for 1 month, $9.99 for 6 months, $17.98 for 1 year). Over 3000 servers and 10,000 unique IP addresses in 60 countries. Protocol Support: IPSec, OpenVPN, PPTP; Proxy: SOCKS, HTTP, and SSL proxies. Use the code tech-radar-2017
• **Ending 31/12** Shellfire is offering a whopping 50% discount on all of VPNdeals. Shellfire is based in Germany, where very strong data protection laws exist, so reader's data is super secure with them. Contrary to popular belief, they are not forced by law to log any usage data of our customers.
• **Ending 31/12** HideIPVPN has an exclusive Techradar deal. 80% off any plan ($1.99 for 1 month, $9.99 for 6 months, $17.98 for 1 year). Over 3000 servers and 10,000 unique IP addresses in 60 countries. Protocol Support: IPSec, OpenVPN, PPTP; Proxy: SOCKS, HTTP, and SSL proxies. Use the code tech-radar-2017
• **Ending 31/12** Getfoxyproxy has an exclusive Techradar deal. 80% off any plan ($1.99 for 1 month, $9.99 for 6 months, $17.98 for 1 year). Over 3000 servers and 10,000 unique IP addresses in 60 countries. Protocol Support: IPSec, OpenVPN, PPTP; Proxy: SOCKS, HTTP, and SSL proxies. Use the code tech-radar-2017
• **Ending 31/12** Getfoxyproxy has an exclusive Techradar deal. 80% off any plan ($1.99 for 1 month, $9.99 for 6 months, $17.98 for 1 year). Over 3000 servers and 10,000 unique IP addresses in 60 countries. Protocol Support: IPSec, OpenVPN, PPTP; Proxy: SOCKS, HTTP, and SSL proxies. Use the code tech-radar-2017
• Save 40% on any IronSocket VPN subscription, exclusive to Techradar Users when they use the coupon code TECHRADAR40 at checkout.
• Have a VPN plan for life and get up to 20% off at LiquidVPN. Use the voucher code radar20 at checkout to make your VPN package more affordable.
• Get 50% recurring discount for the yearly plan and 33% off for the 6 months plan from VPNBaron! Use the link on this page to get +1 device with every subscription!
• Enjoy 20% discount on all our subscriptions when you use the voucher code TECHRADAR20 at checkout. Get more than just a VPN service, get a Firewall as a service that also includes all the VPN features! Join the community at Uppersafe now and start to be peace of mind.
• Get a massive 50% off regular and yearly price from VPN provider Windscribe.

You might also be interested in:

• How to set up and maintain a VPN
• How to make your VPN more secure
• How to build a dedicated VPN router
• How to use VPN on Android

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