I don’t know where you’re from, but if you have a genuinely difficult time connecting to commercial VPNs where you are, but Opera still works, it sounds like a honeypot.
And if you’re just strapped for cash, you might want to consider a service like RiseUp or Proton instead…
This can be your opinion if you want but I strongly disagree with Chrome not having any cons and Vivaldi being unstable. In fact, I actually use Vivaldi to get the classic Chrome style back which is done by using ChromifyVivaldi and I don’t really have any problems with that using modified settings. As for Chrome, the disadvantages are simply that the browser is barely even customizable, it tracks everything you are doing online and sends your data to Google, and it tends to use a lot of memory.
I say from my perspective because of this, everybody have different experiences for different browsers. I am trying all browsers, I have +100mbps internet speed but sometimes Vivaldi takes seconds to open web pages sometimes cant open while other browsers dont have problems like this. I have 16GB RAM and never have RAM issue but the reason I put ‘???’:
I dont have any bad exp. but maybe some people have, I dont want write ‘‘no cons.’’
I agree with you when it comes Google collect data and data collecter things make me uncomfortable too but because of I use nearly all Google services and they provide quality services for me, I dont care so much but you have a point.
You right, Chrome doesn’t have so much customization settings but I able to customize Chrome for my taste but Edge customization setting are not enough for me.
Proton probably feels slow because it is. There aren’t very many fast free VPNs that aren’t sketchy. For your purposes, Opera might be just fine, just keep in mind they can see everything that your ISP would usually be able to see.
Is Cloudflare WARP blocked there too? If yes, lookup Oracle Cloud, you can get a 2-4 free VPS running your personal VPN protocol from the relatively simple shadowsocks through Outline up to the more complex V2ray which even works in China.