Home > Consumer Reviews > HP 2159M 21.5-Inch HD LCD Monitor

At first, I was a little disappointed. Mainly because the more-rectangular shape seemed to squish things in comparison to my old monitor. But now I think it's great. So far--I've had it about four months--I have had absolutely no problems.

I was torn between these and a much more expensive ($75 more) Samsung. I'm very glad I got two of these. Totally plug and play, though they come with older single-link dvi cables. I replaced the cables with dual-link DVI cables bought here on Amazon. Switched the monitors on and voila. Colors and depth are outstanding. Excellent clarity. My eyes don't tire at all, even after hours in front of them. The build quality is very good. Even the stand doesn't feel flimsy. The HDMI input is very handy. Wish more manufacturers made it standard. The small speakers aren't going to make home audio speaker manufacturers tremble in fear, but they're fine for videoconferencing and YouTube-grade stuff. Great feature set. Would buy them again.

I am using this HP 2159 M monitor for last 3 months without any problems, colors are fantastic, I use mostly to connect my mac, lenovo, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 to it. Both console run native-ly at 1920*1080 and colors are pretty awesome, I connect laptop using DVI to HDMI and DVI D port, without any problem. Monitor can be adjusted vertically and sideways, it has built in sound which is good enough for me, only complaint being there is no Audio out such as connecting headphones to monitor so have to rely on the inbuilt speakers.

I bought this wonderful 21.5 inch HDLCD monitor to add a second monitor to my desktop iMac. What a fantastic piece of electronics! First, the design is so beautiful it actually made the 3-year old iMac on my desk look old and dated, even ugly. I never thought that would happen.

The screen colors are vivid and sharp. The set-up is completely "plug and play" and the needed cables are in the box, which is great. The price is very reasonable- to get a great quality, beautiful screen like this for around $200 (9/2009) is amazing.

Amazon shipped the product lightning fast - I ordered on a Friday afternoon and got it early Monday morning, even without using express shipping.

I paid around $230 for my HP 2159m several months ago and I believe it was a great deal at that price. This 21.5 inch monitor has the same resolution as many 23 inch monitors so it has more pixels-per-inch than most monitors which results in a sharper image. The 3000:1 contrast ratio appears low compared to some other monitors but I can tell you the image quality is excellent. My last monitor also had a 3000:1 contrast ratio and also had very good image quality so I believe that 3000:1 is a good design choice. The three most important numbers for monitor image quality are pixels-per-inch, contrast ratio, and response time. This monitor's stats are very good for this price. (Note that some numbers published for some monitors do not seem to hold up when you compare them at your local retailer.) The overall quality including general appearance of the unit is also excellent.

I have used the HDMI connection to watch DVDs using an up-scaling DVD player (a sony DVP-NS710H) and I am generally satisfied with the results. The Sony is a very inexpensive up-scaling player so I had to play with its settings to get the best picture but once I did I was very pleased with the results. With movies like "Blade Runner" which are really hard on lower-end up-scaling DVD players because of its complex image dynamics (strongly back-lit scenes etc.) the contrasts in some scenes were not optimal. "Master and Commander" on the other hand looked great (except for one back-lit scene). It should be noted that various HDMI equipment can be a bit fussy about whether the source or the display should be turned on first in order for the two units to get in sync with each other. If you are having trouble getting the display to work with HDMI equipment try turning them on in the opposite order.

Just for the record, I am happy with the Sony player. The fact that you can get an up-scaling player that works at all for around $70 is rather amazing, and I think that at that price the Sony DVP-NS710H is at least as good as any of its competition. Of course, if you can afford to drop $200 or more on a better player more power to you.

I think the HP 2159m is a great monitor, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a monitor in this size/price range.

Update 10-01-2009:

I very recently picked up a used graphics card and during the process of matching the monitor and card settings to achieve the best image I discovered that the Sony player is probably doing a better job than I gave it credit for. The default brightness setting on the 2159m is 90% of full which was probably chosen for a brightly lit office environment. With the new (for me) graphics card (connected to the DVI-D input) and with the Sony DVP-NS710H (HDMI input) the best image (at least to my taste) was achieved by turning the 2159m's brightness either all the way down to zero or very near it, and setting contrast to maximum or close to it. With these monitor settings and Sony playback set to 'Dynamic 2' and 'Sharpness 2' the back-lit-scene problem was pretty much solved and the image brightness and color looked pretty good (using a Bladerunner DVD as the test). ((I also noticed that if I maxed out the 2159m's brightness, some video sources produced image defects similar, but probably to a lesser degree, to those the one-star reviewer talked about. It may be that whatever problems he had were made worse by a to high brightness setting.)) For the record I use the 2159m as a computer monitor under somewhat low, indirect lighting, and as a video display with lights out.

Two caveats that apply to just about all monitors of this type: (1) The vertical viewing angle can have a significant effect on the image. This has been the case with every monitor of this type I have had experience with but has not been a problem in practice. (2) The glossy finish (if I may call it that) makes for a great look and a great image but if you are going to be using it in an environment with significant light sources positioned behind you in such a way as to produce a strong reflection on the monitor you may find it annoying.

Overall I continue to give the HP 2159 very high marks. With the new graphics card and monitor settings my favorite computer game looks amazing, and desktop images etc. still look very good. With the DVD-player/Monitor-settings discussed above even the Bladerunner DVD looked pretty good, so any less demanding film (in terms of video dynamics) ought to look fine. I am not talking five-dollar-milkshake videophile quality here, I am saying that for the price of this equipment I am quite pleased with the results.

Since I am not planning to write a separate review of the Sony DVD player I should say that the image quality on a large conventional TV was very good, the sound quality was surprisingly good, and all of its features that I have played with (JPEG display etc.) worked as advertised. As explained above I am generally pleased with the upscaling results I achieved in combination with the 2159m.