When comparing Nuance Power PDF Advanced vs Sumatra PDF, the Slant community recommends Sumatra PDF for most people. In the question“What are the best PDF editors?” Sumatra PDF is ranked 5th while Nuance Power PDF Advanced is ranked 20th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Search allows for patterns
A typical search will allow you to find only the things that you know exist in a document. In comparison, pattern search enables you to find things that match certain criteria. For example, you can search for a SSN without knowing the actual SSN.
Pro Built-in speech to text conversion
Instead of typing, you can dictate the PDF.
Pro LexisNexis Casemap integration
Pro Supports bates-stamping and bates-numbering
Pro Comprehensive annotation tools
Pro Interface will be familiar to MS Office users
The editor uses a Microsoft Ribbon interface that's used throughout Windows and other Microsoft products.
Pro Starts quickly
Pro Free and open source
Sumatra is available for free, licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Low resource usage
Pro Does not have heavy editor features
Annotations and other heavy features are just not needed in reader.
Pro Extensive keyboard shortcuts
Pro Elegant interface
Pro Portable
The application consists of a single file that can be run without installation. You can put it on an external device, such as an usb thumb stick and run it on any Windows machine from the thumb stick.
Pro Multilingual
It's available in 69 languages.
Cons
Con Somewhat pricey
A single license costs $149.99.
Con Windows only
Con Lacking in features
Sumatra aims for simplicity at the expense of functionality. For example, there's no way to annotate PDFs or edit them.
Con Fonts are not smooth enough
Not as smooth as e.g. Adobe Reader. No anti-aliasing
Con Cannot crop empty fields
Just got used to this killing feature on Goodreader on Mac.