Tech
Best of CES 2022: The most intriguing and innovative PC hardware
CES returned to Las Vegas in 2022, but most of the major PC players decided to stick to the safety of remote events. The parade of PC hardware went on regardless. Big names AMD, Intel, and Nvidia all made splashy announcements, and PC manufacturers followed in their wake with new products, many coming soon. Peripherals and displays proved just as exciting. We also witnessed some deeply interesting reveals that had nothing to do with computers whatsoever, like a chameleon-like color-shifting BMW.
No time to sift through all our CES coverage? No problem! Read on for our Best of CES picks—the most intriguing and innovative products we saw. (If you’re looking for higher-level impressions from the show, be sure to check out our roundups of 5 laptops trends and 5 monitor trends that PC enthusiasts can’t ignore.)
CyberPowerPC Kinetic case
CyberPower
We’ve seen a lot of PC cases in our time, but none that has the wild take on practicality of CyberPowerPC’s new Kinetic series. This futuristic case features a set of small, angular panels on its front that automatically open and close to manage airflow. Between the geometric design, sleek white and copper aesthetic, and mechanical wizardry, it looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. The company demurely refers to its design as “intelligent airflow,” but it’s a hell of a way to stand out among the field of mid-tower ATX cases. —Alaina Yee
Alienware 34 QD-LED
Dell
We’ve seen a few OLED screens aimed at PC gamers before, but they’ve generally been repurposed TV panels with a few extra bells and whistles (and of course, that lucrative “gamer” branding). Alienware seems to be the first out of the gate with a screen built from the ground up with PC gaming in mind. This massive 34-inch monitor is still tiny by comparison to previous designs, fitting into the popular 34-inch ultrawide category.
But it’s not wanting for bells nor whistles. In addition to the usual RGB lighting, G-Sync support, and plethora of inputs expected from a premium PC gaming monitor, the Alienware QD-OLED 34 combines quantum dot technology with the perfect blacks and vivid colors of OLED for a brighter overall panel, overcoming some of the technology’s inherent weaknesses. It’s a common theme among the new TVs at CES, so it’s great to see that (finally) going right into a PC monitor. On top of that you get a speedy 175Hz native refresh rate (impressive for this size), a USB hub, and a host of gamer goodies as well.
In short, while there are bigger and more impressive OLED “monitors” on the show floor, this is the one I’m going to be extremely tempted to spend (lots and lots) of money on in 2022. —Michael Crider
12th-gen Intel ‘Alder Lake’ laptop CPUs
Intel
We wouldn’t be lying if we said CES 2022’s bushel of laptop CPUs was an embarrassment of riches, with AMD first announcing Ryzen 6000 mobile CPUs using its impressive Zen 3+ cores, and then Intel firing back with its 12th-gen Alder Lake mobile CPUs. What’s better? Well, we don’t honestly know yet to be honest. Both lines offer pretty spectacular feature sets, such as the new RDNA 2-based GPU cores in AMD’s Ryzen 6000 processors, which offer twice the performance of the older chips. Intel’s CPUs, meanwhile, bring core counts to unheard-of levels with three pound laptops wielding 14 cores on tap.
So you can see our predicament in trying to pick the best laptop CPU announcement at CES—everyone’s a winner! “Best of” awards never get shared, however, so that means we have to pick a winner and with phaser to our head, we declare Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake laptop lineup as the best laptop CPU of the show.
Offering a hybrid architecture with up to six performance cores sitting aside another 8 efficiency cores, a combination expected to offer more than 40 percent increased performance over Intel’s already pretty awesome 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPUs, Intel’s 12th-gen chips will be very difficult CPUs for even AMD’s new Ryzen 6000 series to unseat in terms of raw performance. —Gordon Mah Ung
Samsung Freestyle portable projector
Samsung
Projectors may seem out of fashion these days, given the ubiquity of fancy monitors and televisions. But given world circumstances right now, the idea of setting up a big-screen viewing experience almost anywhere hits just right. Whether you want to have outdoor movie nights or make the most of ultra-tight living quarters, the Samsung Freestyle can adapt to the situation. It takes the same amount of room as a thermos, can run off of a USB PD power bank, and even screws into standard E26 light bulb sockets. No one needs this projector, but I definitely want one. (You can get the full lowdown on the Samsung Freestyle over at TechHive, our sister site.) —Alaina Yee
Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3
Lenovo
You know what’s better than one display? Two displays. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 certainly raised some eyebrows at CES this year due to this rather unusual feature. That said, it’s a cool bit of hardware that makes multitasking a whole lot easier. The secondary display, which lives on the right side of the keyboard, is 8-inches with a resolution of 800-by-1280. The screen is made of glass and touch-enabled, and it allows you to quickly access apps like Microsoft Outlook or Edge. It’s a great productivity machine for business professionals looking to get some serious work done, that’s for sure. —Ashley Biancuzzo
AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT
AMD
Over three long years after Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 20-series kicked off the real-time ray tracing revolution, the first sub-$200 graphics card capable of handling those beautifully strenuous lighting effects is finally here—and it came from AMD, not Nvidia. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a humble $199 desktop GPU pitched more as a budget successor to the popular Radeon RX 570 than a true ray tracing powerhouse, but flipping on AMD’s new Radeon Super Resolution feature (which will speed up performance in all your games) should help pick up the slack.
The sheer fact that a $199 graphics card exists in the midst of a severe GPU drought is worth cheering, and since AMD outfitted the 6500 XT with 4GB of RAM, it can’t be used to mine Ethereum—the primary cryptocurrency helping to drive up graphics card costs. Time will tell if you’ll actually be able to get your hands on one of these for around its sticker price, but I’d wager you’ll probably have a lot better odds finding a Radeon RX 6500 XT in stores than Nvidia’s newly announced $249 RTX 3050, whose juicy 8GB memory buffer puts it squarely in the sights of miners. The Radeon RX 6500 XT could be just what desperate PC gamers need in 2022. Fingers crossed. —Brad Chacos
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
Nvidia
In a world where gamers are grateful to buy four-year-old used GPUs at their original list price, Nvidia’s mic drop reveal of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (it’s pronounced “tie”) felt like a slap to everyone’s face. It’s also, frankly, the most gangster move ever, akin to casually drinking from a diamond-encrusted Evian bottle while surrounded by masses of people dying of thirst.
If you were offended by it though, you’re missing the whole point of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti’s existence in the first place.
Coming as the replacement for a card so luxurious that most reviewers said to skip it (ourselves included), the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti does two things: It gives those trying to scrimp by on $200 million NBA Super Max contracts something to buy to replace their old GeForce RTX 3090 with, and it flexes muscles in AMD’s and—more importantly to Nvidia—Intel’s face in a year we’re likely to see a GPU cat fight the likes of which we’ve never seen before. So while the 3090 Ti may not be the best GPU at CES (that honor goes to the Radeon 6500 XT), it’s definitely the best BFGPU at CES. —Gordon Mah Ung
L’oreal Colorsonic
L’oreal
Back when CES used to be something we visited in person, I got pitched my fair share of beauty-tech products. But unlike the “magic mirrors” products of yore, which showcased cool tech but didn’t actually solve a widespread problem, the L’oreal Colorsonic piqued my curiosity in the same way as innovations in PC cases and smart home products—it’s tech that aims to eliminate common hassles.
L’oreal says this hair-dyeing wand simplifies the process of at-home coloring by making it far less messy and ensuring even application of dye (the two biggest issues for DIYers). You simply choose one of 40 shades, load in the cartridge from the haircolor kit, and then brush the device through your hair for dye application. We’ll see how effective this product will be for dark hair (which typically needs to be bleached first), but color me intrigued. —Alaina Yee
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
The Ryzen 7 5800X is faster than AMD’s own Ryzen 9 5900X flagship, too.
AMD
Like laptop CPUs, the desktop CPU news at CES was beefy AF, with Intel filling out its entire desktop line up of 12th-gen CPUs, from $42 budget chips to the non-K CPUs most people buy. Intel closed off with news and a demo of a special edition “KS” chip that can run all of its performance cores at 5GHz while gaming. AMD, likewise, talked up its next-gen Ryzen 7000 processors due in the second half of the year—which can also run games with all cores at 5GHz. The CPU that might have the most impact for gamers, however, was AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which packs 64MB of high-performance L3 cache on top of an 8-core Ryzen 7 5800 die (hence the “3D” in the name).
That cache, AMD says, is just what games love, and will boost the Ryzen 7 5800X3D to gaming performance at and above that of Intel’s top-end Core i9-12900K chip. It’s so fast that AMD laid claim to it being the “fastest gaming CPU.” Sure, Ryzen 7000 is sexy and Alder Lake’s full roster is exciting, but the value of a “fastest gaming CPU” sticker on the box is going to make most consumers gooey inside and easily qualifies as the best desktop CPU announcement at CES. —Gordon Mah Ung
BMW iX Flow
BMW’s iX Flow is a concept, but one that should be familiar to PC users. What would happen if you took an ordinary BMW SUV and instead replaced the “paint” with a bunch of E-Ink panels? The result is the BMW iX Flow, which can change colors on the fly. Since they’re E-Ink, you can only switch between black, white, and limitless combinations of gray, black, or various patterns/combinations, but it’s simply way cool, as you can see in the tweet above. —Mark Hachman
Dell UltraSharp 32 4K
This seems so obvious I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before: The Dell UltraSharp 32 4K is a desktop monitor that doubles as a Thunderbolt I/O dock. Maybe it just strikes me as particularly genius now that I’m working from home more often than not and finding myself regularly moving between my personal desktop and my work laptop, while having just one large monitor and one desk between them.
With the UltraSharp 32 4K, I could connect both machines to my 3240×2160 IPS display, as well as my mouse and keyboard, and use the KVM switching feature to seamlessly move between the two PCs as needed, using all the same peripherals, without adding any extra clutter—in the form of a standalone dock or switcher—to my already-cluttered desk. Shoot, you could possibly even daisy-chain a second monitor. At the same time, the UltraSharp’s dock would be keeping my laptop charged without the need for its own power cable. How great is that? Ports include DisplayPort 1.4, USB-A ports, 10Gbps USB-C connections, an RJ45 port for Ethernet, and audio. It even has a built-in webcam. —Katherine Stevenson
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE
Acer
Acer’s Predator Triton 500 SE strikes a balance between work and play, something that will hopefully become a trend in the future. Why have a gaming laptop and a productivity laptop, when one notebook can do both? Sure, there’s a powerful 12th-gen Core and an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU inside, but the real story is just the workmanlike exterior and lack (yes, lack) of RGB bling. Long battery life, a high-res display, and gaming chops is a trend we like to see. —Mark Hachman
TP-Link AXE11000 Tri-Band Archer AXE200 Omni
TP-Link
Routers packing Wi-Fi 6E—the cutting-edge networking standard worth investing in—showed up in force at CES 2022 after sticking mostly to rare, high-end models in 2021. We saw Wi-Fi 6E routers rolled out by Netgear, TP-Link, Asus ROG, and even Comcast at the show, every one featuring blazing-fast speeds and killer next-gen features. My favorite though? The TP-Link AXE11000 Tri-Band Archer AXE200 Omni, and for a very, very dumb reason. It features mechanically self-adjusting arms that have a practical purpose—maximizing throughput from this ultra-fast router—but just as importantly, look absolutely badass.
As Wes Davis put it in his coverage, the whirling robo-arm setup “delights me—as someone who grew up with an ’80s family-friendly sci fi-fueled vision of the future wherein all houses are full of whirring gizmos with superfluously-rotating, undulating, oscillating whatsits and doodads—on a purely superficial level.” And as a simple man who likes simple pleasures, all I can say is amen, brother. —Brad Chacos
LG C2 42-inch OLED TV
LG
Prior to LG’s announcement this week, using an OLED television as a monitor meant going big—displays started at 48 inches and only went up from there. Having one sitting just a couple of feet from your face was borderline unwieldy. The upcoming 42-inch version of the LG C2 doesn’t sound all that much smaller, but the six-inch difference should make desk usage feel far more comfortable. And at that close distance, you’ll be able to properly enjoy OLED’s deep black levels in all of your favorite dark, moody games and movies. The only bummer about LG’s announcement is that the 42-inch and 48-inch version of the C2 lack the brighter EVO panels of their larger siblings. (For more info on the LG C2 lineup and other OLED TV announcements from CES, head over to our sister site TechHive.) —Alaina Yee
Lenovo Legion 5i Pro
Lenovo
With its glacial white chassis and barely-there bezels, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is sure to turn heads. The minimalistic, sophisticated aesthetic is a most welcome departure from the traditional gamer look. But it’s more than just a pretty face. The 2960-by-1600 resolution IPS display features a lightning-fast adaptive refresh rate of 240Hz. The sky-high refresh rate is a major selling point, as it means smoother gameplay. The laptop is also driven by a 12th-gen Intel Core processor and RTX graphics. If it’s power you’re looking for, the Legion 5i Pro should have everything you need. —Ashley Biancuzzo
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- Security
- Anti Malware
At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Very accurate color
- Great out-of-box image quality
- Good range of image adjustments
- Smooth, clear motion performance
Cons
- Expensive for a 1080p monitor
- Bland, basic design
- Modest SDR brightness
Our Verdict
Acer’s Nitro XV272 costs more than a lot of 1080p monitors, but the IPS, 165Hz screen provides above-average image quality and motion performance, and a full range of monitor-stand adjustments and a generous array of ports make it worth the cost.
Best Prices Today: Acer Nitro XV272
1080p resolution isn’t cutting-edge, but it remains the most popular resolution among modern PC displays. This is often because of budget: There are dozens of cheap 1080p monitors. But what happens when a 1080p monitor makes image quality a priority?
Acer XV272: The specs
The Acer Nitro XV272 (LVbmiiprx) is a 27-inch, 1080p monitor with an IPS panel and a 165Hz refresh rate. This puts it smack-dab in the most crowded segment of the monitor market. Here are the XV272’s most noteworthy specs.
- Display size: 27-inch
- Native resolution: 1920×1080
- Panel type: IPS
- Refresh rate: Up to 165Hz
- Adaptive sync: AMD FreeSync Premium and G-Sync Compatible
- Ports: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort, 4x USB 3
- Stand adjustment: Height, tilt, swivel, pivot
- VESA mount: Yes, 100x100mm
- Speakers: Yes
- Price: $349 MSRP, around $279 typical
A few features help the Nitro XV272 stand out. It has a 165Hz refresh and is compatible with both AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync. It also has three video inputs, four USB ports, and a stand with numerous ergonomic adjustments. These features signal that the Nitro XV272, though not expensive, is a cut above entry-level 1080p monitors.
Acer Nitro XV272: Design
The “Nitro” name might sound exciting, but the XV272, like all such monitors from Acer, looks pretty plain. Acer’s Nitro sub-brand focuses on performance over design. Essentially all Nitro monitors use a simple, matte black housing paired with a skinny stand with round base. It’s dull but inoffensive.
Matt Smith / Foundry
The stand feels cheap when handled but offers plenty of ergonomic adjustment. This includes height, tilt, swivel, and even pivot. Swivel and pivot aren’t guaranteed at this price point, so it’s good to see them here. There’s also a 100x100mm VESA mount for attaching a third-party monitor arm or stand.
There is one problem with the stand: cable management. You won’t find a hole in the stand for routing cables. Instead, Acer uses a tiny clip on the base that does a terrible job of keeping cables bundled.
Acer XV272: Features and menu
Connectivity includes two HDMI 2.0 ports, plus one DisplayPort, and a total of four USB-A 3.0 ports for connecting wired peripherals. This makes the monitor a moderately useful USB hub, though it lacks more advanced features like USB-C with Power Delivery. Still, the Acer Nitro XV272 has more ports than most 1080p gaming monitors.
Matt Smith / Foundry
The Nitro XV272’s menu system could be better. It looks basic, with simple icons and unattractive fonts, and doesn’t feel responsive while using the joystick to scroll through options. The joystick and select buttons are easy to use, but the power button is a bit too close to the select buttons. I accidentally turned off the monitor several times.
These issues hide a surprisingly robust slate of image-quality options. This includes precise gamma presets, several color temperature modes, and six-way adjustment of color saturation and hue. There’s also a few gaming-centric features such as a frames-per-second counter and built-in aim points. The monitor lacks a black equalizer setting for brightening dark areas, however, which might disappoint fans of competitive shooters.
The monitor includes a pair of two-watt speakers. They’re not great but well suited for podcasts, YouTube, or games with less impressive audio. You’ll want to put on a headset when sound quality matters.
Acer XV272: SDR image quality
The Acer Nitro XV272 is towards the high end of pricing for a 27-inch 1080p display. Gamers can snag a 1440p or 4K monitor for about the same price. Acer combats this with a vivid, accurate image.
SDR brightness comes in at about 250 nits. This is low but, as you’ll see when I discuss HDR, it’s not the monitor’s true maximum brightness. Acer appears to be limiting the monitor’s maximum potential in SDR mode. That said, the monitor is still bright enough for use in nearly all situations. It will only appear dim if used opposite a sunlit window.
Matt Smith / Foundry
The Nitro XV272’s modest contrast ratio is typical for a modern IPS gaming monitor without Mini-LED technology. Like its peers, the XV272 suffers from “IPS glow”—a hazy and blotchy appearance noticeable in dark scenes.
That said, the monitor’s contrast ratio is good for the price. Aside from LG’s new IPS Black panel technology, which is currently available in just a couple displays from Dell, no IPS monitor without Mini-LED performs significantly better.
Matt Smith / Foundry
Color gamut is solid, covering the entire sRGB color space plus 88 percent of DCI-P3. The range of colors it can display is great for a mid-range gaming monitor and does provide an advantage over alternatives with a more narrow color space. The added color provides a vivid, saturated look that’s attractive in games.
As for color accuracy, the Nitro XV272 knocks it out of the park, with a default color accuracy more typical of a high-end professional monitor than a mid-range gaming monitor.
Acer doesn’t sell the XV272 as a professional display, and its meager 1080p resolution will take it out of contention for many, but creators who stick to 1080p resolution will find this monitor surprisingly capable when editing photos, video, and digital art.
Matt Smith / Foundry
The monitor had an ideal gamma curve of 2.2, which means content looks about as bright as was intended. Default color temperature came in at 6200K, which is slightly warmer and more reddish than the typical temperature of 6500K. As mentioned earlier, the monitor offers multiple gamma and color temperature settings, so there’s a lot of room to tweak the image if you want.
But you don’t need to—and that is the monitor’s greatest strength. The XV272’s decent contrast, accurate color, and lack of noticeable flaws makes for a fantastic out-of-box experience. The SDR image is lively and inviting.
Matt Smith / Foundry
There’s one obvious limitation: resolution. This is a 27-inch 1080p monitor, which translates to a meager pixel density of 81 pixels per inch. Fonts are poorly defined, videos lack sharpness, and games show distracting shimmering and pixelation. This isn’t a dealbreaker for me, but you should know what you’re getting into. A 1440p alternative will look much sharper.
Acer XV272: HDR performance
The Acer Nitro XV272 supports HDR and is VESA DisplayHDR 400 certified. HDR support is becoming common among gaming displays, but it still feels special at this price point. I measured a maximum HDR brightness of 450 nits, which is solid.
Though it supports HDR, the Nitro XV272 failed to automatically detect an HDR signal and turn on HDR mode. I had to select it manually. This is a minor annoyance but disappointing, as nearly all monitors I test have no problem detecting HDR automatically.
The Nitro XV272’s HDR performance is better than expected. It delivered performance that was superior to more expensive monitors, such as the Gigabyte M27Q X and Asus ProArt PA279CV, with better color gamut and accuracy in HDR.
Still, ultimately, this is a budget monitor that can’t do HDR justice. HDR content can deliver a bit more detail in bright areas but otherwise isn’t necessarily more colorful or rich than in SDR—it just looks slightly different.
Acer XV272: Motion performance
Acer’s Nitro XV272 has a maximum refresh rate of up to 165Hz. This delivers smooth, fluid motion in games and a quicker, more responsive feel when using the desktop. The monitor officially supports AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync, so you don’t need to worry about whether the monitor will work with your particular video card.
Shoppers should remember this is a 1080p display, which is less demanding than 1440p or 4K resolution. Achieving a frame rate that fully uses the 165Hz refresh rate is possible in a wide range of titles. This is good news for gamers on a budget.
Motion clarity is good at the monitor’s default response-time setting. The monitor has an OverDrive mode, which can be activated when using several gaming-oriented image-quality presets. This can improve clarity but also causes overshoot, an issue where a pixel moves beyond the intended color, resulting in artifacts around high-contrast objects. Most owners should just leave OverDrive at the default setting of Normal.
Final thoughts
The Acer Nitro XV272 LVbmiiprx is a good monitor for gamers who want attractive image quality at a mid-range price. Resolution will be an obstacle for some, as it’s possible to buy a 1440p monitor on the same budget, but the XV272’s accurate image and great motion clarity makes up for the lack of sharpness.
The XV272 is also a good choice for content creators who want accurate color for less than $300, making it a well-rounded, budget-friendly choice for those who work from home and want one display for both productivity and gaming.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
While nothing beats a full-featured PDF editor like Adobe’s Acrobat Pro DC, sometimes you don’t need all the bells and whistles. When you just have to edit a few lines of text, add or reposition an image, or make some review notes, a free PDF editor may be the way to go.
Free PDF editors offer a few advantages over their paid partners. First and most obviously, they don’t cost anything. If you don’t work regularly with PDF files, a premium editor probably won’t be worth the investment and a free editor can get the job done on the occasions you need to make some quick changes to document. Second, free PDF editors generally work in your browser so, unlike paid PDF editors, there are no platform- or device-compatibility issues to worry about. (The exceptions are free trial versions of paid editors, which need to be downloaded to a device.) Finally, because free online PDF editors are used on-the-fly, they generally have much simpler, more-intuitive interfaces and tools than paid editors do.
Of course, you can’t expect a free product to have all the sophisticated features of a paid one. Most will let you edit PDF files by adding and modifying text and images and annotating with shapes, freehand drawings, and notes. Fonts and font sizes, colors, and shape options will almost assuredly be more limited than what you’d find in a paid editor, though. Free editors will also let you create PDFs and convert them to other file formats. This is probably all you need for occasional work with PDFs.
You may find features like form filling, e-signatures, and content redaction in some free editors. But capabilities like password protection and bates numbering are almost unheard of. Frankly, if you dive deep enough into PDFs to use any of these features, you’re probably better served by one of the desktop editors in our best paid PDF editors buying guide.
1. PDF Candy – Best free PDF editor overall
Pros
- Many advanced features
- OCR capability
- Very easy to use
Cons
- Lacks a single interface, which some users may not like
- Free version limits you to one task per hour
PDF Candy is the rare free PDF editor that offers a lot of the features you’d typically have to pay for. We’re talking scanning, multiple file-conversion options, and OCR functionality. While the free version has access to the expansive toolset of the paid version, you’re limited to one PDF task per hour. For unfettered access, you need to shell out $6 month.
2. Apple Preview PDF editor – Best free PDF editor for Mac users
Pros
- Full set of PDF markup tools
- Supports form filling
- PDFs can be protected with passwords, encryption, and permission controls
Cons
- Limited native sharing options
- Only available to Mac users
Mac users have an excellent PDF editor built right into their operating system. Although its ostensibly a photo viewer, macOS’s Preview app is rife with PDF-editing capabilities including tools for adding text and shapes, redacting content, making freehand drawings, inserting sticky notes, and capturing your signature using your trackpad, camera, or iPhone.
3. Sejda PDF editor – Most versatile free PDF editor
Pros
- Online and desktop versions available
- Performs dozens of PDF tasks
- No frills interface is easy to use
Cons
- There are daily usage limits without a subscription
- Limited font options
Offered as both an online tool and a desktop editor, Sejda is capable of performing dozens of tasks including editing, form creation and filling, Bates stamping, file encryption, and more. If the daily usage limits are too restrictive for you, you can upgrade to the affordable paid version.
Read our full
Sejda PDF editor review
What to look for in a free PDF editor
- Content editing: As its name indicates, a PDF editor’s primary function is to enable you to edit a document. That includes the ability to add and modify text; insert, resize, and move images; and reorganize pages in the PDF. Most free PDF editors will let you perform these tasks, though they may impose daily limits on how many you can perform or how many documents you can edit.
- Create, convert, and export PDFs: A common need for a PDF editor is to create PDF files from scanned hard copies or by converting digital documents. A good free PDF editor will be able to convert common file formats such as Word, JPG, and HTML to a PDF and preserve the original formatting. It should also be able to export PDFs into other editable formats such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, HTML, or plain text, maintaining the original files hyperlinks, images, and other elements.
- Review and annotate: Most free PDF editors allow you to add comments and other annotations to PDF files during review. Typical annotation tools include sticky notes, shapes, and drawing markup options.
- Signatures: Often all you need a PDF editor for is to sign a document. This used to be a premium feature only available on paid desktop editors, but more free PDF editors are allowing users to create and add electronic signatures to documents.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
- Productivity Software
Author: Michael Ansaldo, Freelance contributor
Michael Ansaldo is veteran consumer and small-business technology journalist. He contributes regularly to TechHive and PCWorld.
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Acer Nitro XV272 review: Top-tier gaming on a 1080p monitor
Best free PDF editors: Our top picks
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