Brightness vs Contrast

[ilostthegame]

Hi, I bought a monitor from Dell, the U2312HM.  Even at the lowest brightness setting, it is to bright for me.  Dell recommended to lower the contrast ratio to get the screen dimmer.  To put things in an unscientific way, I feel like the backlight stays just as bright, but the the screen color is just darker after lowering the contrast ratio.  Is adjusting the brightness and and the contrast ratio the same thing like Dell seems to indicate?

[TheEpicCanadian]

Contrast and brightness are very different. In as few words as I can think of, contrast is the intensity of the colours and brightness is literally just how bright the backlighting on the screen is.

[ilostthegame]

Thank you for clarifying that brightness adjusts the backlight, and that contrast adjusts the color.

[needmorewood]

brightness refers to the amount of light being emmited
contrast is a little harder to explain. something with more contrast in terms of monitors ussually means how dark the blacks are and how white the whites are. a larger contrast will eman the darkest blacks are "farther away" than the whitest whites