PDF Reader Pro

Although it was first released in 1993, the Portable Document Format remains very popular today. Few formats have the advantage of keeping the style of your documents intact when moving them from computer to computer, while also making the content difficult to edit.

Sure, nowadays even your web browser can read a PDF, but dedicated applications offer a bunch of extra features that some may find useful. So let’s see what PDF Reader Pro has to offer.

Use PDF Reader Pro to open your PDF files and then read away. You’ll be happy to notice that the app has some interesting annotation tools, which you can use to highlight parts of a text, underline or strikethrough words, draw lines or circles using a ruler or a protractor, and even add text.

Obviously, you can insert comments and bookmark a page, but you can also add a small number of stamps which you can’t really customize (apart from resizing them). When using any of the aforementioned graphical tools, you can only change the opacity and choose from a limited number of colors. The exception is the ballpoint pen tool, where you can adjust the size of the brush instead of the opacity, and you can also choose from a slightly larger color palette.

Though I didn’t detect any major faults or errors, PDF Reader Pro can feel a bit clunky at times. For example, if you want to remove an element, you can’t simply press the Delete key; you have to right click, and then select the option from the context menu.

Another example would be the colors themes, which don’t really look that great. The beige theme doesn’t affect the color of the page (only the background, which doesn’t really help), while the dark theme makes everything, well, too dark.

While PDF Reader Pro has some useful features, it doesn’t necessarily feel a tool that you could easily integrate into your workflow.