Best PDF reader for iPad
June 24, 2010 2:50 PM

What is the best PDF reader for the iPad? I'm talking about speed, features, reliability, etc.
posted by antgly to Technology (14 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
Googreader is great, allows viewing and downloading files on dropbox, and is just nicelypolished. For reading books in PDF format I prefer Stanza, partly because it has fun page-turniness.
posted by monkeymadness at 3:02 PM on June 24, 2010


...and by Googreader I mean Goodreader. iPad auto-correct in action!
posted by monkeymadness at 3:03 PM on June 24, 2010


I like GoodReader, too.
posted by dfriedman at 3:40 PM on June 24, 2010


I would have said GoodReader before the latest iBooks update. It's now the one I use unless the PDF requires zooming, as with some magazines.
posted by Pamelayne at 4:20 PM on June 24, 2010


Goodreader paired with DropBox for the win.
posted by lucidprose at 4:40 PM on June 24, 2010


Nthing Goodreader. Especially with the recent update that allows you to crop the reading area. And the drop box integration is pretty fantastic too.
posted by tundro at 5:48 PM on June 24, 2010


Any dissenting opinions?
posted by antgly at 7:01 PM on June 24, 2010


Used Goodreader for some really monstrous PDFs (bills in Congress). Worked well. Better than opening another window on a computer.
posted by grobstein at 7:36 PM on June 24, 2010


iBooks (this week's update).
posted by bwanabetty at 8:46 PM on June 24, 2010


I use goodreader. It is responsive when viewing big PDFs that the new iBooks chokes on. In addition, it allows you to organize your PDFs in a hierarchy plus all the nice features for getting files on and off other services.

A friend with 500 PDFs of various academic papers started with Goodreader and liked it, but likes iAnnotate PDF more. He was pretty disappointed with the iBooks update when he realized that the new annotation feature only works with eBooks, not PDFs
posted by Good Brain at 9:03 PM on June 24, 2010


GoodReader.

You can sync to it without wiring up your iPad, because you can mount it as a network drive and drag and drop PDFs, and it even has folder structure--something sorely missing in iBooks.

The locked crop to screen feature tundro mentioned cannot be overstressed -- if you zoom in on text in iBooks, you can't flip between pages easily, the text becomes uncentered, and worst of all...the zoom is lost when you go to the next page. This makes any PDFs with wide margins (like most scholarly articles) way easier to read in GoodReader.
posted by jbrjake at 5:02 AM on June 25, 2010


+n for GoodReader, specifically because their "extract just the text" feature shows great promise and keeps on improving.
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 1:05 PM on June 25, 2010


ReadleDocs. That's what I use.

There is also an app called Papers that looks interesting.
posted by chunking express at 1:26 PM on July 9, 2010


+GoodReader
posted by andreinla at 5:21 PM on August 26, 2010


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