I read someone say he needs to use a certain monitor at 5 brightness and just 20 contrast.
In my experience, increasing contrast decreases the effort required by the eyes to read text and take in information. This probably is why VA monitors are superior for comfort since with low brightness you can still get excellent contrast, so your eyes are exposed to much less light energy without having to struggle to read what is on your screen. Does that sound about right?
Right now I have my IPS cranked down to 10 brightness and 100 contrast while sitting in a moderately lit daylight environment. I'm looking forward to trying out VA screens given all I've been reading about their benefits.
Someone says, "PVA has better contrast ratios(3k-4k:1 compared to 900-1100:1) and no aggressive AG. fuzzy letters and grey on white is harder on the eyes than sharper dark grey on white. So they are pretty good for text.
Most people either get eye strain from not being able to see text well or from the backlight."
Staring into a bright light is really going to strain anyone's eyes, so the basic premise of a computer monitor has to take a harmful, straining thing and make it tolerable and acceptable. If I look at the backs of my screens, I can see a little bit of the very bright blue-white LED light. Next to the plugs the screens have a circle allowing that light to penetrate out as a power-on indicator. It's a harsh light.
From a 2011 post: "At work I have a couple of Viewsonic MVA or PVA panels and have had no difficulties reading text on them (I'm a web developer)."