PDF Expert Review: A Fast, Intuitive PDF Editor for Mac & iOS

When you think of PDF editors, you probably think of complex, expensive software like Adobe Acrobat Pro. But PDF editing doesn‘t have to be difficult or costly. PDF Expert from Readdle aims to make working with PDFs easy for everyone, while still providing a robust set of features.

I‘ve been using PDF Expert on my MacBook Air and iPad Pro to read, annotate and edit PDFs for several weeks now. In this in-depth review, I‘ll share my experiences using the app and help you decide if it‘s the right PDF tool for your needs.

Why Trust This Review

As a technology writer, I‘ve tested and reviewed many PDF apps over the years. I have extensive experience with both the leading premium editors like Adobe Acrobat Pro and more affordable alternatives.

To thoroughly test PDF Expert, I used it as my default PDF viewer and editor for several weeks. I viewed and searched dozens of ebook and reference PDFs. I annotated excerpts from reports for research projects I‘m working on. I filled out a contract for a freelance writing gig and signed it electronically. And I made text and image edits to several PDF documents and forms.

So this review is based on my real, in-the-trenches usage of PDF Expert for the most common PDF-related tasks. Let‘s dive into the details of what I found.

PDF Expert Review

Smooth, Streamlined PDF Reading

First and foremost, PDF Expert makes an excellent PDF reader. The first thing that struck me about the app is how fast it is. Even with large PDF ebooks several hundred pages long, the app never felt sluggish. Pages rendered quickly and scrolling was smooth.

The reading experience is clean and uncluttered. In full-screen mode, the toolbars disappear, letting you focus on the content. You can easily switch between scrolling vertically or flipping pages horizontally. Night mode inverts colors for easier reading in low light.

Searching within a PDF is blazingly fast. PDF Expert quickly indexes the full text and shows you all occurrences on a scrollbar to jump between matches. You can also bookmark pages or sections for later reference.

While reading, you always have quick access to annotation and editing tools (more on those below). But unlike some other apps, the tools never get in the way when you just want to read.

Intuitive PDF Annotation

Annotation is one of PDF Expert‘s strongest areas. As with the other tools, the annotation UI is streamlined and super easy to use.

Highlighting text is a breeze – just select the highlighter, pick a color, and swipe over the text. You can also underline or strikethrough text.

The drawing tools let you add freehand writing, lines, arrows, shapes, and text boxes to the PDF. You can customize the ink color and line thickness. If you have an iPad with Apple Pencil, PDF Expert supports pressure sensitivity for more expressive annotations.

PDF Expert offers a variety of icon stamps you can add to a page, such as Approved, Sign Here, Confidential, etc. While a nice extra, I wish you could create your own custom stamps as you can in some other apps.

One of my favorite tools is the signature stamp. You can create signatures by drawing on a touchpad/touchscreen, typing, or importing an image file. Then you can instantly apply your signature wherever needed. This came in handy when signing a contract.

Overall, annotating PDFs felt quick and easy in PDF Expert. The tools cover all the essentials without overloading you with options. My only wish is for more customization of stamps and saving of frequently-used annotation presets.

Intuitive Basic PDF Editing

In addition to annotations overlaid on a PDF, PDF Expert lets you directly edit the text and images within a PDF. This is a newer feature, added in 2020.

When you click the Edit button, PDF Expert detects all the editable text and images. Selecting text brings up a formatting bar where you can change the font, size, color and alignment.

The tools are very intuitive – it feels similar to editing a Word document. PDF Expert preserved text formatting perfectly in my tests, even with complex multi-column layouts. However, editing is limited to tweaking existing text. You can‘t add new paragraphs or significantly reflow text.

Images can be resized, rotated, flipped and deleted. You can also add new images to the PDF page. Again, super straightforward, though not as full-featured as some other PDF editors.

For many business documents, these basic editing tools will be enough to make quick corrections and updates. Just don‘t expect Acrobat-level editing power.

One notable omission is optical character recognition (OCR). PDF Expert can‘t convert scanned PDFs into editable text. For that, you‘ll need a separate OCR app.

Useful Form-Filling & Signing

These days, many official forms come in fillable PDF format. PDF Expert handles these well, making it easy to fill in text fields and drop-downs, as well as check boxes and radio buttons.

Signing filled-out forms is also a snap. Just create your signatures or initials once, then use the Signature stamp to apply them instantly. The app remembers your signatures across all your devices.

While nothing revolutionary, these tools worked smoothly for me. Filling out a multi-page form took just a couple minutes.

Rearranging & Deleting PDF Pages

Have you ever received a contract or other lengthy PDF where the pages are out of order? Or wanted to remove certain pages before sending a PDF to someone? PDF Expert has you covered with an easy page thumbnail view.

In this view, you can drag-and-drop pages to rearrange them, rotate pages, extract a single page, or delete unwanted pages. You can also add new blank pages or append pages from another PDF. Handy for assembling documents.

I found myself using this often for excerpting single pages from longer PDFs. Much faster than printing to a new PDF in another app.

Secure Redaction

When sharing sensitive documents, you may need to hide or remove confidential information. PDF Expert offers both a blackout and eraser tool for redactions.

The tools are self-explanatory. Drag a rectangle over the text you want to hide. With blackout, the text is covered by a black bar, like you‘d see in a declassified government document. With erase, the text is cut out completely.

On the Mac version, you can also search the full text of a PDF and automatically redact all instances of a word or phrase. Efficient for removing things like Social Security numbers.

Just be aware that redacting doesn‘t always completely "erase" the underlying text. For maximum security, I‘d recommend following redaction with printing to a new PDF.

PDF Expert Ratings

Here‘s how I rate PDF Expert in the key areas I look for in a PDF editing app:

• Ease of Use: 5/5 – The most user-friendly PDF editor I‘ve used. All the essential tools are simple to find and use. Perfect for PDF neophytes.

• Speed: 5/5 – Lightning fast for both viewing and editing. No lag even with very large PDFs.

• Annotation: 4.5/5 – All the key annotation tools, implemented in a slick, intuitive interface. I‘d just like to see more options for custom stamps and saved annotation presets.

• Editing: 3.5/5 – Handles basic text and image editing well. But lacks advanced page layout editing and PDF creation features. No OCR text recognition.

• Forms: 4/5 – Lets you quickly fill out and sign forms. Not much to complain about, but no auto-fill options that remember common field entries.

• Security: 4/5 – Simple tools to password-protect and redact PDFs. Lacks more advanced options like certificate-based signing and baked-in redaction.

Overall, I give PDF Expert 4.5 out of 5 stars. It‘s an excellent choice if you value speed, simplicity, and robust annotation tools. But people who need advanced editing, form creation, and security features will need to look to more full-featured apps.

Alternatives to PDF Expert

The main alternatives to PDF Expert are Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and affordable competitors like Nitro PDF Pro, Foxit PhantomPDF, and PDFelement. Compared to these, PDF Expert has a few key strengths and weaknesses:

Pros:

• PDF Expert is more affordable, especially compared to Acrobat Pro
• Has a much friendlier, more intuitive interface than most PDF editors
• Faster and less bloated than Acrobat
• Unique features like the reading view and page thumbnail grid

Cons:

• Lacks advanced editing features like multi-line text reflow and page layout controls
• No PDF creation tools, e.g. for generating fillable forms
• Can‘t convert scanned PDFs to editable text, since it has no OCR
• No Windows version (Mac and iOS only)

Ultimately, the best choice depends on your specific needs. For heavy-duty PDF editing and creation, Acrobat Pro is still the industry standard. But PDF Expert is faster, simpler, and cheaper for everyday PDF reading, annotating, and light editing.

Bottom Line

PDF Expert is a breath of fresh air in the often clunky world of PDF editing software. The app combines an intuitive, uncluttered interface with a strong set of annotation and basic editing tools. If you regularly work with PDFs and value speed and ease of use, it‘s well worth the price.

Just be aware that this isn‘t a full-fledged PDF editor. While you can make textual changes and do some rearranging, PDF Expert lacks advanced page layout editing and PDF creation features. There‘s also no OCR for making scanned PDFs editable.

But for reading, marking up, signing, and making small edits to PDFs, it‘s hard to beat PDF Expert. The app makes these everyday PDF tasks feel effortless. And the consistent, polished interface across Mac and iOS is a big plus.

If you want a simple, no-fuss way to work with PDFs, give PDF Expert a try. There‘s a free 7-day trial, so you can test it out thoroughly before buying.