Is Private Internet Access fast enough for gaming while traveling?

Is Private Internet Access fast enough for gaming while traveling?

It was well after dark in a Mexico City Airbnb, the kind with high ceilings that echo every time you move a chair, and I was hunched over my laptop trying to join a quick gaming session with friends back in London. In the next room, my partner was finishing a late video call—the kind where you can hear the faint, buzzy rhythm of corporate jargon through the wall—and I knew if I caused even a second of lag for either of us, the evening was ruined. I’d just switched over to Private Internet Access (PIA), mostly because the $2.03 price point on their multi-year plan was too tempting to ignore, but I was genuinely terrified the latency would turn my character into a glitchy mess.

Just a quick heads-up: this site uses affiliate links. If you end up signing up for a VPN through these links, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend the ones I’ve actually paid for and wrestled with while trying to watch the Beeb or game from a hotel room in Porto. Full transparency, always.

When you’re bouncing between places like Lisbon and Bangkok, you start to realize that 'fast enough' is a relative term. For my daily design work, I just need files to sync eventually. For watching University Challenge in Mexico City, I just need a steady stream. But gaming? Gaming is a different beast. It’s all about latency—the 'ping'—which is basically the time it takes for you to click a button and for the server thousands of miles away to realize you’ve done it. If that number gets too high, you’re dead before you even see the enemy move.

The $2.03 Gamble: Switching from the Gold Standard

Before this, I’d mostly stuck with ExpressVPN. It’s the 'gold standard' for a reason—it just works, and the apps are incredibly polished. But at $6.67 a month, I started doing the math. I’ve been living out of a suitcase for three years now, and those monthly differences add up. I found myself sitting there, staring at the screen, wondering if the $4.64 I’m saving monthly over ExpressVPN is worth the three extra clicks it takes to find a server that actually unblocks iPlayer or keeps my ping low enough to play.

PIA’s interface is... well, it’s busy. It’s definitely the 'tinkerer’s choice.' While NordVPN (around $3.39) gives you a nice map and specialty servers for streaming, PIA gives you a wall of settings and graphs. It’s a bit like the difference between a sleek modern kitchen where everything is hidden behind soft-close drawers, and a professional chef’s kitchen where every spatula and pan is hanging on a pegboard. It’s overwhelming at first, but once you know where your favorite pan is, you can move faster.

One humid evening in Bangkok, I was sitting in a hotel room, the rhythmic, low-frequency hum of the air conditioner vibrating in the background, while I watched the ping counter on my screen flicker between green and yellow. I was using the WireGuard protocol—which is the techy way of saying 'the fast setting'—and I realized something I hadn't considered before. In these high-jitter travel environments, raw download speed doesn't matter nearly as much as server proximity and connection stability.

The Learning Curve: Why Proximity Trumps Raw Speed

After about three weeks of testing PIA across different networks, I had my first 'failure' moment. I was in the middle of a match, and suddenly everything froze. My character was running into a wall, and my shoulders involuntarily tensed up, that familiar 'oh no' feeling rising in my chest as the 'reconnecting' icon appeared mid-match. I spent twenty minutes trying to troubleshoot a lag spike, checking every setting in the PIA app, only to realize I had accidentally left a massive design file uploading to the cloud in the background. My bad.

But once I cleared my own clutter, I found the secret to gaming on PIA: you have to actually use those 'busy' settings. Unlike Surfshark ($2.49), which is great because you can put it on unlimited devices (perfect for when my partner and I both have three screens going), PIA lets you dive into the nitty-gritty. On a rainy afternoon in Lisbon, I was dealing with a particularly spotty hotel Wi-Fi that kept dropping. By tweaking the packet size in the PIA settings—something most other VPNs don't even let you touch—I managed to stabilize the connection enough to play without those heart-stopping lag spikes.

How PIA Compares for the Traveling Gamer

If you're looking for a 'set it and forget it' experience, PIA might annoy you. CyberGhost VPN ($2.19) is much more beginner-friendly with its clearly labeled streaming servers and a 45-day money-back guarantee, which is the longest I've seen. But for gaming, PIA’s massive server network means you can almost always find a server that is physically close to you, which is the only way to keep that ping low.

Here is how the landscape looks for those of us trying to balance a budget with a gaming habit:

The Verdict: Is it Fast Enough?

So, is Private Internet Access fast enough for gaming while traveling? Yes, but with a caveat: you have to be willing to do the work. If you just click 'Auto-connect' and hope for the best, you might end up routed through a server three countries away, and your ping will suffer. But if you take the time to look at the latency numbers next to the server names and maybe switch to a dedicated IP for remote work if you’re staying somewhere long-term, it’s remarkably solid.

I still remember that moment in Mexico City when the game finally snapped back to life after I adjusted my server choice. The immediate slump of relief in my chair was real. I wasn't just saving money; I was actually playing. PIA isn't as 'pretty' as the others, and it definitely struggles more with unblocking the Beeb than Nord or Express do, but for the price of a cheap coffee once a month, it gets the job done for gaming on the go. If you're a tinkerer like me, it's a bit of a no-brainer.