Portable Adobe Reader Lite

Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of the software requirements that many users download after installing a fresh copy of Windows for opening PDF files. However, it has made a reputation for itself for being resource-demanding and laggy.

This is mostly the reason why so many equivalent PDF readers have surfaced. Even so, Adobe Reader remains on top of the game. If you're interested in a compromise, however, you can try the lite edition, which is also wrapped in a portable package.

Portable Adobe Reader Lite borrows the necessary and sufficient features from Adobe Acrobat reader, dropping any extra options that would only slow it down. It hasn't received updates for ages but is still compatible with newer Windows versions, although we've noticed that some features do not work properly (not in our tests, at least).

Because it needs no installation, you can conveniently keep it stored in your collection of portable software or on a pen drive to quickly launch it whenever you have to view PDF files. Thanks to the portable edition, Adobe Reader Lite doesn't make changes to the system registry, which might have lead to Windows stability issues over time.

As far as the interface is concerned, Adobe Reader Lite is no longer on par with Adobe Reader. But if you don't mind outdated graphical elements, this shouldn't be an issue. There are plenty of helpful navigation controls, such as zoom in and out, rotating the view, enabling reading view to get rid of the navigation panel buttons and menu bar, or switching to fullscreen mode to get a better look at everything.

Plus, you can search for text in the current document or across all PDF files within a specified folder, activate auto scrolling, capture snapshots of any rectangular-drawn region, use a loupe tool, or use object data and geospatial location utilities. Numerous settings can be configured from the preferences panel. Several features that didn't work at all on Windows 10 were the spellchecker, document signer, and PDF security.

All aspects considered, Portable Adobe Reader Lite may not be what it used to, but it's still a great alternative to Adobe Reader for users who are only interested in viewing PDF files without having to wait a lot of time for the pages to load or for the application to exit.