So I have a bought a S32A700 VA monitor. It was good in store, but once I brought it home, I understood why people do not like VA. It is actually an interesting device, the panel has zero color shift at normal viewing angles, good color calibration, very low smearing, but it is, as any other VA is absolutely unusable in Dark mode in Visual Studio (severe black crash). And also 32 inch is too much it turns out, and probably 27 actually is a bit too much too. 32 inch does improve productivity (+30%), but it emits so much light, it really strains eyes quickly. Also VA panels, it turns out have higher apparent brightness than measured, because when measured perpendicular to surface the calibrator would see less light, than the panel actually emits. The measured minimal brightness of the device is 63 nits (which is what I use on my 27 inch 4k's anyway), but it feels like 85 nits, due to higher brightness at angle.

With all the minuses VA has positives too: contrast is very good, and this makes watching videos and photos an absolutely different experience - they look way more real, and able to penetrate deeper into your attention span, so the have more significant emotional impact. If you watch you videos on anything with less 1500:1 contrast, you literally waste you precious time, not receiving all the emotions the creator wanted to convey.

So I made a decision to use it as a TV and see how it would go.

So, the conclusion:

  1. Do not buy VA for work. I had false belief they are better for eyes, due to limited experience. I was wrong.
  2. VA are ok for watching videos and low fps games.
  3. 32 inch is big, and does improve productivity. However you really good lighting in the room. If you run it in a dim room, make sure that minimal brightness is 50 nits or less.
  4. Contrast is important. I have never tried an IPS black, nor I have budget for that, I have already wasted $1k on failed experiments, however it might work some people, and lower strain. High contrast is important not only foe video consumption, but also for reading.

You can't make conclusions like "VA is worse in general" with the experience of just 1 monitor.
A main factor for eye strain, especially when the screen seems to be too bright, is most likely the backlight. The panel type is probably irrelevant unless it uses FRC or has especially strong pixel inversion flicker (which is not mentioned in the specs).

I'd try monitors that don't use the White LED backlight technology. You may notice that with a different backlight your don't have a huge brightness problem anymore.
Samsung is known for selling displays that most often flicker a lot, so that manufacturer may not be the first choice unless reviews suggest otherwise.

    KM How about oled screen? is better than direct led?

      It can be, I like my phone. The answer is, it depends.

      • KM likes this.

      No, you absolutely can make a judgement about the whole class of monitors based on one monitor, if that particular problem is typical for the whole class, such as TN gamma shift, gaming Nano IPS piercing red phosphorus, IPS glow on almost all IPSes or black crash VA. If you read again I have not said "VA is worse in general" - what I said is:

        1. There is a believe (including this site) that VAs are easier on eyes than IPS. This is not true.

      1. VA is unusable for development purposes in dark mode - which is how like 80% of coders use, to lower the strain. The bottom and top are super light gray and the middle is dark and the black/grey ratio and position of black spot changes every time you move your eyes, which is extremely distracting. IPS are expensive for a reason, and the reason is that other technologies have severe defects.

      2. VA's are better for watching movies,

      That particular Samsung has zero PWM flickering (like almost all modern Samsung monitors), and I am not that sensitive to PWM and FRC flickering anyway, and it certainly has no inversion, which I am sensitive to, but can tell if it there or not right away.
      There is no reason to blame WLED backlight either, because I have several of WLED screens which are comfortable to my eyes. What I cannot tolerate, it turns out is that pearly shine and light leak at angles in dark colors, which an attribute of all VA monitors, but especially for 32+ inch flat VA panels. Probably curved are ok.

      Contrast is great though. Black on white texts looks very sharp.

      a month later

      KM Is there a list of monitors with "FRC" or "White LED backlight" (or "PWM flickering") that users have set up somewhere?

      In another thread I saw someone link to a laptop site which had things not in regular specs, but when I go to the wiki on this site, I just see a list of Dell monitors with one line reviews, which is a bit weird…

      Like, here's a question… can you trust this "flicker free" test, for example? (It does mention that it's edge lit, which is a nice detail I've seen mentioned on this forum before while lurking.)

      https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/lenovo/legion-y27q-20

      • KM replied to this.

          eobet User list: Maybe, but not that I know.

          You can't 100% trust any flicker-free tests. Sometimes those review sites make errors like publishing the wrong data. And if you want to be sure there's absolutely no flicker no matter how tiny, the tests have to be more sophisticated.

            KM i have seen examples where organization decides to change all it's monitors to VA panels because it causes less eye strain. With Samsung's however, i would like to test own, as they still ship some monitors that are flickering. But this one is stating it's flicker free on the website (not actual test). For eye strain i would rather get monitor from brands that are focusing on eye strain issue such as BENQ. They actually even developed in partnership certification for it. The one I would get is EW3270

              dev