PDF-XChange Editor Review

Detailed Reviews

Stepping up from PDF Xchange Viewer and PDF Xchange Lite, Tracker Software developers have introduced PDF Xchange Editor. This PDF editor could easily be the preferred solution for creating and editing PDF documents for free. PDF Xchange Lite also lets you create PDF documents for free but Editor offers more features. Let us take a rather detailed look into what Editor has to offer and how well does it fair.

Speed

Xchange Editor is a basic PDF editor, but it stands apart from the rest in many ways. It is noticeably fast and renders PDF documents in no time. We tested the speed over a file laden with plenty of moderately sized images. It took only a few quick seconds to create a PDF and save it on the hard drive. We agree that the speed may vary across computer configurations, but in comparison to the other free editors we have used in the recent past, it did seem faster. We used the Intel Core i5 process with 3.40 GHz speed backed by a 4 GB RAM. On the other, not as fast, modern computers, we have no reason to believe that Xchange Editor will show any apparent difference in speed.

As a Viewer

Besides being a decent editor, Xchange is also an exceptional PDF viewer. It lays out the PDF documents on a user-friendly, clutter-free interface, allows quick accessibility to the controls and offers incredible ease of use. It maintains the best legibility in the default zoom mode and fits the width of the document within the available window without you having to scroll/drag left or right in order to read or view the content. Zooming in and out using the mouse wheel is fairly easy and with one click of the button on the tool bar on the top you can quickly rotate the document too.

Features

Xchange Editor offers a wide range of editing tools, which is a sight uncommon in most other free editors. There are a number of options to bookmark the PDF documents and annotate the forms. This PDF editor also packs a variety of drawing tools allowing you to create decent looking, semi-professional grade PDF documents. It has the grid tool to ensure precision while drawing. Xchange Editor makes it incredibly easy to hide the comments. And, if you need to import or export the comments, you could do that too without any hassles.  

You don’t necessarily have to save the documents in the PDF format. In fact, the ability to export the PDF pages in various formats, including image formats, is one of the features that make this editor special.

Security

Xchange Editor offers some security features too. You can encrypt the PDF document and password-protect it to prevent any unauthorized access. It also has the ability to manage the properties and security of the document.  

OCR

Inferring from what we have talked about so far, XChange certainly looks like a pretty solid PDF editor. But, there is one feature that merits a special mention as it clearly steals the spotlight from every other free editor we have used and puts its right on Xchange Editor – the ability to search for the text contained in the scanned files. It uses the OCR process to convert the imaged or scanned PDF document into a text-searchable document. You will not find this in any other free editor.

Advanced Pro Features

PDF Exchange Editor also includes some features from the PDF Xchange Pro, which is a paid edition, but only for the demo purposes. Using a Pro feature, such as adding digital signature, will add watermark to the PDF document.

Summary

We will be unhesitating in saying - without any shred of doubt - that PDF Exchange Editor is one of the finest free PDF editors out there. It comes bundled with plenty of features not found in the other free editors. It is very fast, allows you to save the documents in various formats, converts the scanned documents into text-searchable format, and offers basic security features. It also has some Pro features for demo purposes, but they add watermark to the saved document.