Several years ago I surveyed PDF reader software for desktops, with an eye to: 1) speed of opening, and 2) being a “magazine reader”.

There were only two free ad-free winners, The Windows Reader desktop app and Sumatra PDF. Sumatra won because, unlike MS Reader, you can turn off the “gutter” line for two-page magazine spreads. Being able to do that is a vital feature, for viewing magazines that run pictures across double-page spreads.

I took another look at the range of PDF readers, just now. Surprisingly, no-one has yet produced a dedicated elegant free “PDF magazine reader” for desktops, with a big idiot-proof one-click button for: “two-page spreads + cover-page, no gutter line”. Sumatra PDF is still the closest, with its Book view (Cover + Facing pages) which is found under Settings | Options | Book View. But the gutter line still has to be removed by fiddling in Advanced Settings, to manually change: PageSpacing = 4 4 to PageSpacing = 0 0

I tried a few other free desktop readers, to see if anything had changed and there were any new contenders. I ended up trying the following…

* PDF-XChange Viewer. Painfully slow to render pages, uninstalled. Apparently the whole of CERN is forced to use this, for security. Secure it may be, but fast it is not.

* PDF Architect. The interface looks slick, like MS Office. It’s still available free, but has been superseded by a more advanced paid version. It was a 13Mb download, then it needed to go online to get a “Startup module”. This download stuck at 1% and never completed. Killing the downloader process revealed it was 32-bit anyway, something that was also confirmed by further research. There doesn’t appear to be a standalone version.

* MuPDF, open source… but it’s what Sumatra is built on. Basically it’s Sumatra but without the advanced controls.

* Evince is also open source. Curiously it doesn’t feature on lists of the best Adobe Reader alternatives, or at Major Geeks (now the best freeware directory). Possibly this is because Evince is said to ignore DRM in PDFs, and/or because people think it’s not for Windows. Yet there is Evince for Windows. It’s somewhat fast, but sadly it has a fat ugly gutter on double-page spreads which can’t be removed. Nor can it handle PDFs from Microsoft Publisher, not being able to display semi-transparency correctly. Uninstalled.

* I assume that Adobe Reader is still bloated and also a major security risk.

Thus, as far as I can tell, the only real free / ad-free / nag-free, fast, 64-bit and reasonably secure option for magazines at the start of 2020 is still Sumatra PDF. One can of course send a PDF magazine to your tablet or megavision TV for leisurely sofa-and-chocs browsing, but desktop-based professionals often need a quicker desktop solution for flicking through PDF magazines.

There is a portable version that can run with its own settings file. This can be useful if you need a second installation with a tiny gutter line — to check for slight gutter-overlaps in the output PDF.