Workbench "Studio Lights" vs the previous "Solid OpenGL Lights"

Every time I compare the old way of adjusting the viewport lighting in 2.7x with the new 2.8 Studio Lighting it’s obvious that it is much harder to get good, readable shading.
This is the main reason why I have used MatCaps for the vast majority of my work in 2.80.
Here is a direct comparison with one white central light on a sphere in 2.79 vs 2.80:

Although the 2.79 light when set to 100% white is still rather grey, it gives a much better gradient from light to dark. Meanwhile the 2.80 light is very harsh with very little gradient.
Even the “Smooth” option doesn’t help and instead mostly just pushes the outer edge of that gradient further:

To get anything readable from the studio lights you need to rely on specular lighting, which is not a good solution. I think it would be ideal to get a good gradient like in 2.79 back.
What do you think?

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I don’t know if somebody gave a feedback that conducted to that result.
There was probably done with a valuable reason to get rid of black outline.
I am not sure it was just developer’s feeling.

I think that you are probably right, too.

Maybe Studio Light Editor could give to user a control about speed of gradient.

My first impression is that it is a gamma correction issue. But I’ll be probably wrong