Seagull Interesting observations. One of the most universally comfortable monitors from my research is a relatively old ViewSonic MVA series of "office" monitors with such poor response that you get ghosting when scrolling through text.
"ViewSonic VA2452SM 24 Inch 1080p LED Monitor DisplayPort DVI and VGA Inputs for Home and Office, Black"
Comes in 22" as well. I read reviews on this site very positive about a slightly different 2455SM. In terms of eye comfort for basic office work, I've yet to read a bad review about this unit, even by those generally bothered by screens. The only bad reviews are from those complaining about really bad ghosting. For example:
"Completely unusable as a gaming monitor. The response time is just abysmal and leads to horrific color blending and frame rate issues. Even just watching videos is choppy. I was given this as a gift but will definitely be getting a refund to buy a better monitor."
"This monitor is advertised as having a 7ms response time, but there's no way that's accurate. Even scrolling text gets blurry fast, and the response time setting on the monitor just changes the blur from white to black."
"This may be the monitor for you, but it's not the one for me. I'm a professional programmer. You wouldn't think a monitor could be too slow to use for reading text, but this one is.
It's advertised as 7ms G-G, but there's no way it's that fast. I replaced them with Dell's, with an advertised 8ms G-G. The Dell is a whole lot faster.
Scrolling text is very ghosty. It's extremely annoying. There's a response setting in the menu. If you turn to one direction, white-on-black text ghosts slightly less, and the other direction lets black-on-white text scroll a bit better, but it's not ideal in any setting. Video playback also shows ghosts, as written in other reviews, but that's not my intended use so I was not bothered by that.
The slow response was mentioned in two other reviews, one of them mentioning gaming and the other somewhat hard to take seriously (given the overwhelmingly positive reviews). I should have taken it seriously. These are going back.
For static images, the display looks fantastic. It may be good for photo editing, but if you write code, you want something else."
Therefore, this is a case of a monitor with terrible response time yet no one complaining about it causing eye strain.
Therefore, are these high refresh screens really the answer?