Hi Fraser,
the speed is appoximately around 5 Mbit/s. Always-On-VPN is a MS-solution, using a VPN RAS Gateway for point-to-site VPN connections for remote client computers.
It is pre-configured on my laptop, so whenever I am not directly connected to my organization's network, it will automatically try to establish remote access when I connect for example to my home network (wireless or wired - doesn't matter). Therefore it's more like a PC client you don't have to start separately and I am not using the Hybrid VPN feature (no config file has been given to me by my company). I used the disable QoS-feature in the OS-QoS menu as you assumed, giving me the appropriate warning in regard to QoS, which I accepted.
I've been working my way through other VPN-related forum topics concerning VPN difficulties. Could there be challenges regarding the protocol (Always-On-VPN uses IKEv2 and SSTP) or the Open VPN-version?