ezPDF Reader Multimedia PDF for iPhone

ezPDF Reader the Multimedia PDF viewer, annotator, and form filler with calculations

At first blush, it may not be clear who exactly ezPDF Reader is meant for. It's advertised as easy to use, starting with the name, but includes tons of features. The answer is simple: it's designed for everyone to use, from someone browsing through technical manuals or reading a good book, to workers everywhere who need to red-line, highlight, and otherwise dig right in to a host of PDF documents as part of their jobs.

Intuitive, but not overly simple

Of course, it's hard to balance the needs of those two groups. The program starts on this task by having an inviting-looking interface, full of nooks and crannies for its various features. These include staples, such as zooming and highlighting; accessibility features, like text-to-speech; and a ton of ways to annotate or modify a PDF, from writing memos to drawing directly on the document. It even has several features that are harder to find among PDF readers, particularly on the Android, such as form-filling. Essentially, if there's any specific thing you need to do with a PDF aside from creating one from scratch, this reader can probably do it, and do it well: each of its functions do no less and no more than they were intended to. This makes it intuitive to use, as long as you're able to ignore the presence of features you may not personally need, and makes it suitable in almost any use case.

Designed for multiple markets

ezPDF Reader's interface is an interesting case. In a sense, a literal case: it presents PDFs as books, and the interface has an old-timey, wooden look to it. This looks a little out of place among some other Android applications, and the Android OS itself, but it works well enough as an aesthetic for a program you'll probably be using to read, and perhaps even relax. In fact, while the interface is generally well-designed, it gives priority to the basic functions a reader would use, such as zooming, changing PDFs, and so forth. Some of its productivity functions, such as saving, are hard to find initially in the program's interface. Some forms of annotation can be undone with the Undo function, while others must be erased with a separate tool. Overall, the interface is good-looking and easy to use, but it has a small learning curve for office users before it becomes as easy as it's meant to be.

A great way to read on the go

Overall, ezPDF Reader is as easy to use as its name would imply for all but the heaviest power users, who ideally won't be bothered too much by having to look around a bit to first learn how to save. The program has a boatload of features, none of which have been added to the program half-baked. Whether it's accessibility or annotation, ezPDF Reader does as much as it can, and it does it very well.