I decided to keep the Lenovo and return the MSI Raider. After a lot of testing and settings configuration, I think I have a fairly usable setup now. This is still not as comfortable as my tablet (Samsung Galaxy S7) or phone (iPhone 11), but way better than any new laptop I have used.
I think for me personally, glossy hi-res screen works better because the text looks sharper and I can more easily focus on it. So far I can only use NVIDIA graphics set to 8-bit color mode. The AMD graphics forces 10-bit output which is not comfortable at all. I suspect it's because the panel used in this laptop is 8-bit + FRC.
Thanks to user si_edgey here, I have been using the red color file as my desktop background and can easily see the banding with 8-bit color output but not with 10-bit color output. I am attaching the file in case it's helpful to others
The next step is to try out Linux, either pop_os or MX Linux distro. Even if that does not work out (I strongly prefer using Linux), I am thrilled to have a usable laptop that can at least run Windows 11.