HI, any advice on which out of a VPN or Smart DNS is the best way to go to use with Kodi, Netflix etc would be very helpful. I know the DNS won’t give any anonymity but the VPN seems to slow the connection down??

I think most DNS services have all but dried up for Netflix. Those that do work, it's sporadic at best.

unotelly works fine with kodi unlocks the blocked links, as for netflix i don't know any that work at the moment.
Cactus vpn have given up, unblock-us seem to have gone quiet, overplay well less said about those clowns the better, smarty dns has given up, viperdns seems to have gone, ibvpn can't unblock netflix.

I was using Unblock Us right up to 3-4 months ago.It was a hit or miss towards the end for me regarding changing the Netflix region.