I have been using Sumatra PDF for a while now, and while I’m mostly happy with it, I would like something with a few more features. Everyone seems to suggest Foxit, to the point where it is now the first result on Google for “pdf viewer”. Unfortunately, the rendering quality of Foxit is well below par:
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| Foxit Reader 3.1 | Sumatra 0.9.4 | PDF-XChange 2.0 |
All screenshots are with the document at 100%. Small font rendering quality is important, even on a large monitor. I often have one window with code I am editing and next to it another window with a datasheet PDF. Foxit looks pretty bad at any zoom level.
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| Foxit Reader 3.1 | Sumatra 0.9.4 | PDF-XChange 2.0 |
You can click the above images for the an expanded view of the whole program window. Again, Foxit is by far the worst, with Sumatra and PDF-XChange about equal.
Overall, I’d have to say that Sumatra is the best. Zooming can be a bit strange in it, but the quality and very small program size make up for all that. I’d like a few more features, such as bookmarks and web browser style back/forward navigation, all things which PDF-XChange does. I’ll probably keep both of them around for now until I can pick between them.
One thing is for sure though, after the bloatfest that is Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader is actually the worst option. Sumatra PDF, which is fully open source, is quite simply much, much better at displaying documents – the primary purpose of any PDF viewer.
2 Comments
Foxit PDF, is a just unbeatable as an alternative, if you dont have sensitive bees-eyes. I dont notice the font differneces, but you really cant beat the PDF mode- to plaintext mode. multiple tabbing, highlight, and various scroll. I like it. Although, I have never used Sumatra, but it looks too plain. I think Evince on Gnome which is a bit minimalistic seems like it could be more featureful than Sumatra. Also, Evince has a Windows release now.
Thanks, I’ll look at Evince.
No PDF reader seems to be quite as good as Adobe’s for rendering quality, and even that isn’t quite as good as Windows when it comes to fonts.
Windows with Cleartype is one of the few renderers which is designed to be readable on screen at the expense of accuracy. Fonts don’t look quite how they do in print on screen, but they are easier to read on an LCD.
I suppose the whole point of PDF is to display a document exactly as it prints, but some lack of accuracy in exchange for extra on-screen readability is a reasonable compromise in my eyes (no pun intended).