I imagine it's easier for you to dim the brightness to your preference than for others to somehow manage to tweak every bit of brightness out of their graphics card settings after the monitor's settings tap out

Use case: I'm in front of a window, if the sun's out and I've got the curtains open I might as well just turn the screen off

You would think monitor manufacturers would the brightness control go all the way to barely visible, but they don't. I have two monitors, an Asus and a Dell, both set to what they consider brightness level 0, and neither quite as dim as I'd like.

On most display devices, "contrast" controls the white level and "brightness" controls the black level. (These controls of course interact.)

For your use case, you might want to be adjusting contrast down.

You can get them to go lower at that point by decreasing the contrast. But yes, you highlighted what my problem with brighter displays is.

I work in a pretty bright office -- usually I have the windows open and the overhead light on. My monitors (a Planar and a Philips) are both plenty bright enough for this use case, but neither of them will get as dim as I'd prefer once it's dark out and I have only the overhead light. If I would prefer to work by lamplight only (as I sometimes do), the contrast between the super-bright-on-the-dimmest-setting monitors and all the peripheral space around them makes my eyes hurt.

And, here's the thing: I like brightness, usually. As @ianai mentions, what's needed is a larger range, not the same range but brighter.

Consider using f.lux (or a copycat on Linux) to dim and match the color temperature of your lamplight in the evening.

I have used f.lux and redshift in the past. They can help reduce the eyestrain a little, and I guess they have a psychological effect around sleep, but they don't actually dim the light.

Once upon a time it was normal to adjust the location of the desk to the person working there. If lefthander, place table towards the left wall with light coming from window on the right. If righthander, place to the right of window. The typewriter was placed on a small table in front of the window.

When the computer showed up, it was first placed in the corner toward the window or in front of the window but the later location proved hard on the eyes so we stopped with that.

What has changed now that we stopped with this practice? I thougt we would have the office layout perfected by now?

Not being a part of a hive mind unfortunately I did not have this wisdom inbuilt and apparently neither did the people designing my house with the window facing the sun that my home office lives in.

I could rotate the layout 90 degrees and only have sun glare half of the day but it's just easier to either close the curtain a bit or crank the brightness

If you sit next to a big window like I do, having the extra brightness is extremely helpful.

It's sometimes nice to have the option for high brightness, as the situation calls for it. But there's no need to run it at full blast at all times.

My problem with the brightness is that it pulls up the minimum brightness available. Most of my devices are too bright for me at their minimum settings at night time.

Can't you always lower the brightness in software, at the OS/driver level? Unless you're saying that this compresses the dynamic range of brightnesses too much, to the point where you can't distinguish shades that you need to be able to for your work.

Most cheaper monitors have always on backlights that can't change brightness.

Get a gaming monitor with ULMB and you'll never have this complaint again. It takes a huge chunk out of the brightness.

I'm glad to know that. It doesn't matter if it's the nvidia or ati version?

Got some suggestions?

On a Mac, there is the Shades software, which I used for some time (I think it interfered with Flux, so I stopped). It's quite effective.

http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades

That's unusual.

Not at all.

Same here. I don't see the point in having a bright screen unless you're in sunlight or have a lot of glare.

I do the same thing - I've found that reducing the brightness as much as possible helps with eyestrain (assuming everything is still readable).

You can get it to go get further by decreasing contrast.