Absolutely.
Years ago I was told China Unicom is a more ‘foreigner friendly’ service provider, with regards to VPN use. I was fortunate at a couple of places I rented in Beijing to have China Unicom and I had excellent connections with almost no VPN issues.
Of course, on top of provider issues, the various districts/cities/provinces police GFW limitations differently. In the past three years I’ve seen huge differences in stability and speed across three international-brand hotels where I stay within the same city. The newest hotel of the three had the worst speeds and most aggressive blocking. Perhaps a look into the future?
^ this. it’s in point of actual fact the only VPN provider I’ve found that works with ANY degree of consistency.
There are a couple of other products are hit and miss, but very little that works more than 70 percent of the time.
I don’t have trouble with speeds, but the ping times are kind of garbage. Not much else that works, sadly.
To say ONLY is an overstatement. None of my friends are using Astrill tbh. There are cheaper variations for an ‘okay’ speed (i.e., you can browse and watch videos and stuff).
Wannaflix works fine too. Not perfect, but fine.
Wow that is great. If this is an issue within the software itself, I do hope they (Astrill) fix it soon. 
Thanks for your pointers! I basically try to switch around the ‘favourited’ servers. My last resort is US supercharged as they seem pretty laggy and slow imo.
Ah yes, I did not know that it gets worse around October. I hope things change for the better.
Honestly, ever since I am in China, I am sharing my data at every waking moment (since everything is done through your phone number or wechat or alipay etc). So at this point, they can get all they want. It is not like I am doing anything illegal. hahah
… I cannot believe you are asking this. I literally put in the post that it was such a hassle for me to turn it on and off because the time taken to authenticate and stuff.
Yea as of now, it is ‘working’ better than before. I am saying this because I noticed that if I restart the laptop before using it, it seems to always work. I also feel like the problem may be been due to the Smart Mode. Sometimes, it works after I toggle it ON and OFF repeatedly. But yea, it is still annoying at this point.
Also, I think that I would have to buy an Astrill router as well?
If you buy an Asus router, you need to update its firmware to a version called Merlin (developed by the community).
Once you have done this, you can run a 1 line script that you obtain directly from Astrill config website, and then you have Astrill running on the router, for your whole network.
Buy a travel router.
If you have access to an ethernet port, you can do this
My favorites have always been the Taiwan or JP servers for best ping. Openweb is now the least reliable of all protocols. Only stealthvpn/wireguard really work consistently to access the apps on phone (if you’re on an apple phone, then you don’t even have this option).
I live in China for 5 years now and tried several different VPN providers (Express, PIA, Nord etc). Astrill is the one that works best.
Does it work great? No.
Is it annoying to reconnect to servers like 30 times a day on mobile? Hell yes.
Does performance deteriorate before holidays and notable dates like the Tianmen Square day. Oh yes…
But it is still the best you can get. Only alternative is to leave censorship bubble (which I will very soon, yay).
So, you just leave it on the whole time?
Ya SMART mode is not a smart option, sorrry XD ya-consider the leap vpn service.
Ah okay, thanks for your advice!
I definitely need more information about this bit
Hahah, excluding those censorships and such, I do find Shanghai to be a pretty good place to live. I am not sure how it is for other places though.
