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:
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.
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.
4 Comments