Hi @andreasl,
I’m also a super fan of PDF Expert. Basically use it to read papers on a daily basis. But the reason I highly recommend MAXQDA is that, as I mentioned earlier, the logic of reading and annotating is totally different!
When you use PDF Expert to read and highlight papers, you do it one at a time. So when papers piles up and time goes by (this is especially true for a long project like dissertation), you probably start forgetting some contents you already read several months or even years algo. Of course, you can export your notes from PDF Expert and search for them.
But imagine one day you read a new paper, some thoughts of that paper remind you of a similar point that you read in another paper. These can be interconnected and together can be used to support your argument. PDF Expert in this case may not help you relate these two papers or two paragraphs of these two papers. But MAXQDA can come in handy: use the same code to highlight the two paragraphs of those two papers, and then they will be grouped under that code. Next time when you want to see all paragraphs under that code to support your very argument. Just double-click that code, it will show you all the marked paragraphs in all papers you read. Isn’t it amazing?