Personally I think Opera is one browser that does not gets its fair share of attention in the tech review community as it should. Especially when it comes to the desktop place, the browser is often overshadowed by news about Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and lately Edge and Vivaldi browsers.
However, the case is very different when it comes to the mobile space, particularly in markets where broadband is expensive and unreliable. Opera Software’s Opera Mini rules these waters. That is why most users who use the Opera Mini browsers on their phone, always have Opera browser also installed in their desktop computer.
While its performance on the desktop is a far cry from how it performs on the mobile, users still use it for the very same reason. They want a fast browser that does not consume much data, and that is where Opera Turbo comes in.
Opera Turbo is a data compression tool, Opera Software has baked into its desktop browser, to shrink the sizes of pages; thereby giving users on slow networks, faster speed and less data consumption.
However lately the Opera Turbo feature has ‘been missing’ lately, in the sense that you cannot easily located it as you could before. Previously to access the feature all you had to do was go to Menu > Opera Turbo. Currently, the feature is tucked away deep into the Advance Settings
How to enable Opera Turbo
Go to Menu > Settings > at the bottom of the left panel click on the checkbox next to Show advanced settings. Then on the same left panel, go up and click on Browser, then move to the right panel and scroll to the very bottom.
You will see Opera Turbo, click on the checkbox to enable it and you should start browsing at increased speed as the pages will be compressed by the Opera Software server before being relayed to your device.
About Opera Turbo
As you browse with the Opera Turbo enabled, it means all your data is passing through Opera Software servers. However, there is an exception (according to the company) of encrypted sites like you bank, which Opera assures us will not pass through their server for reasons of respecting your privacy.
Then again, you cannot have Opera Turbo on and the built-in Opera VPN simultaneously. When you turn one on, it automatically switches the other one off.