When comparing Material Theme vs Zenburn, the Slant community recommends Zenburn for most people. In the question“What are the best color themes for text editors?” Zenburn is ranked 11th while Material Theme is ranked 17th.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Improves Sublime Text's user interface
The theme cleans up the interface so that all elements in the UI are easier to find without being distracting. The icons for each file type clearly define what the file is so there's no having to look too closely at file extensions.
The color scheme choices (such as Oceanic Next Dark) in particular work well to distinguish functions, classes, keywords, properties, values, etc. for various languages.
Pro Visually appealing
Pro Full language support
Pro Exceptionally easy for your eyes
Pro A battle-tested solution backed by decades of happy use
Pro Low contrast color theme
The low contrast will reduce eyestrain.
Pro Ported to a lot of apps and software
Cons
Con No contrast between main view and panels
Makes it hard to distinguish what's what at a glance.
Con Developer pushes versions too often
Very little meat in each version. Has been known to dramatically change the color scheme.
Con Quite low in contrast
While the low contrast reduces eye strain, some people may prefer the added legibility of a higher contrast.