When it comes to PDF files, which is a great format for sharing documents, we may use the official PDF reader from Adobe called Adobe Reader. It is really good and always updating, but it is very slow and use extra bits of resources in your PC. These days, computers are powered with lot of processing power and lot of RAM, so an app being a resource hog won’t be a bigger issue, but if you want to check out other lightweight applications which can handle PDFs and also loads faster than Adobe Reader, here is the guide.
I am going to show you 3 alternative applications.
- Sumatra PDF 2.5.1
- PDFXchange 2.5
- Nitro Reader 3
Sumatra PDF
This is the most light weight PDF application, just 4.1 Mb in size and can open not only PDF but also MOBI, XPS, DjVu, CHM and comic books formats CBZ and CBR. It also comes as portable version which is great for you to put it on a flash memory whenever you go out.
It has a very basic user interface which is very easy to navigate and has all the features needed in basic PDF viewer such as continuous page scrolling, double side page views for eBooks, and keyboard shortcut support for easy navigation.
It also has recently open document view – whenever you open Sumatra PDF, the welcome screen shows recently opened documents and whenever you open PDF file, it starts from where you left off, so this is also a plus point when you are reading a long book or document.
Small size and fast PSF opening and scrolling makes it ideal for PDF viewing. But some people way see the minimal user interface as too simple to use.
Download Sumatra PDF
Download portable version
Sumatra PDF Homepage
PDF XChange Viewer
It is one of my favorite, it has a good range of features with nice user interface and also open PDF documents faster like Sumatra PDF. User interface is simple and the icons and menu system make is very easy to navigate, beginner computer users will find it very helpful.
PDF XChange viewer opens documents faster and also page scrolling is very smooth. It has extensive search function, which can search in reverse too. It also has snapshot feature which allows you to copy a page or portion of a page as an image. Another very useful feature is the multi tab view, which allows you to open multiple documents in same window.
It does have PDF form filling capability and comment and markup tools. PDF XChange viewer also installs browser plugins to easily view PDF files from your browser without downloading and opening them separately, but these days it is really pointless as Google Chrome and Firefox has built-in PDF viewers.
While PDF XChange Viewer is a free application, you can also upgrade it to Viewer Pro and then it will allow you to extract PDF pages, print as PDF and some other extra functions too.
Download PDF XChange
Download portable version
PDF XChange Home page
Nitro Reader
Another PDF reader from Nitro PDF, they are well known for their PDF editor which is really good and cheap alternative for Adobe Acrobat. Nitro Viewer is made from the foundations of their Nitro Pro. Nitro has Microsoft Office 2010 style user interface with ribbons rather than menu, so if you are familiar with MS Office 2010, then you will find easy to navigate with Nitro viewer.
It does have tabbed view to allow multiple document viewing in a single window, yet the user interface is simple, when we compare the performance between Nitro and PDF XChange or Sumatra PDF, PDF XChange and Sumatra wins. Nitro viewer’s opening time and scrolling speed is much slower than the competition.
Nitro viewer has lot of advanced features other PDF viewers miss or only on their paid versions. Nitro viewer allows you to make PDF files from other files formats, such as images, word document, excel sheet and so on. It also allow you to extract texts and images from PDF files. It also has a way to type on PDF files – a feature no other PDF readers reviewed here have.
While installing Nitro viewer, it installs a free PDF printer. It is very hand when you want to convert your document to PDF, you can just print them as PDF.
Nitro Viewer installer is online based, you need active internet connection to download Nitro viewer from the installer.
Download Nitro Viewer
Nitro Viewer Homepage
Finally, these applications are great, less resource eating, more responsive than Adobe Reader, but Adobe Reader has it advantages too. It gives the maximum compatibility for any given PDF files, and the font rendering is much smoother which means the text looks much better on Adobe Reader than any of the viewer reviewed here. Well the choice is yours.
Download Adobe Reader 11
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