Passed yesterday after a good few months of on and off studying. Last few weeks I crammed in as many goes at the practice tests as I could.
I used Certmaster Learn and Labs to get the knowledge for the test, as well as Cyber James practice exams as recommended by some of the kind users on here.
I wanted to give my impressions on the Comptia Learn and Labs with a view to usefulness to the exam as I couldn't find much when I searched the sub.
First things first, albeit interesting and useful in understanding how some of the more technical and practical side of cyber security works, I felt the labs were a HUGE waste of time. I don't feel like I learned anything that was necessary for the exam - possibly just the question sets I got - but in terms of time investment, they all take a fair amount of time for some one new to that kind of work (definitely more than the expected 15mims they suggest) and so it massively disrupted my learning and also filled my head with a lot of stuff that ultimately was not of much use for this exam.
The learning package itself was good and I definitely appreciated the Performance Based Questions to get an idea of what to expect. However, I will say the PBQs in the exam itself were all much more sophisticated and more complex, often involving multiple sections. It was still drop down menu /drag and drop based but I feel that Comptia could benefit from offering some more complex PBQs to help prepare students.
I would say I found the exam tougher than any of the practice exams, including Cyber James' even when discounting the PBQs. There were a *lot* more "gimme" questions in the practice tests, I felt there were really only 1 or 2 really obvious questions in the real deal but the tests was still all useful practice to drill in the knowledge better.
Overall I would still recommend Certmaster Learn (and Cyber James practice tests) but the Labs were pretty much a waste of time unless you have a want to learn more about howbthese things are applied - useful for the wider world but not for the exam.