Few projectors share the flat oval shape of the 1080p Anker Nebula Cosmos D2140. The only other one we've seen is the 4K Anker Nebula Cosmos Max. Instead, most room-to-room portables get the extra space for the robust sound systems that partly define the category by adding extra height. In most cases, that gives them a close to cubical shape, as with the Miroir M1200S and the Epson EpiqVision Mini EF12, our current top pick for the category. The two Anker models prove that making the projector wider rather than taller, and rounding off the corners for an oval shape, works just as well. The $799.99 Cosmos is also a bit lighter than its most direct competition. And although it doesn't offer enough to replace the EF12 as our top pick for room-to-room portables, it's a credible contender.
Easy Setup, Easy to Move Around
The Cosmos is built around a 1,920-by-1,080-pixel DLP chip and an LED light source rated at 30,000 hours in its Standard power mode. Also included is fully integrated Android TV 9. I had to repeat the pairing process for the remote several times before it paired, but the Android TV setup is standard otherwise, offering Wi-Fi as the only choice for connecting to your network.
As with many Android TV projectors, the Cosmos tries to make up for the lack of an Android TV-compatible Netflix app with a downloadable Netflix app designed for mobile devices with touchscreens. To use it, you have to install it on your phone, connect to the Cosmos by Bluetooth, and use the phone screen to control the projector. In my tests, I found the app clumsy to use, but the streaming worked without problems.
By definition, room-to-room portables should be easy to move, including to the backyard for a movie night; they should also offer good enough audio so you don't need to carry a sound system with them; and they should be easy to set up. The Cosmos passes all of these tests. Its flat oval shape measures 3.6 by 11.4 by 7.8 inches (HWD), using the longest diameter for the width and shortest for the depth, and it weighs only 3.3 pounds. I found it easy to pick up securely with one hand.
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Physical setup is typical for the category. Position the Cosmos, connect the power cord, and optionally connect video sources to either or both HDMI ports. Then turn it on and adjust the image size if needed by moving the projector. You can also use digital zoom, but it's best avoided as with any projector, since it lowers brightness and can introduce artifacts. There is no optical zoom. The auto focus, which you can run using a single button press on the remote, gave me the sharpest possible image every time, although the best focus was a touch softer than I expect from 1080p.
The audio, which offers Dolby Digital Plus, delivers high enough volume to fill a large family room, at quite usable quality, but you can also connect to an external audio system via the one HDMI port with ARC support or the S/PDIF optical audio output. The projector itself can serve as a speaker for other Bluetooth devices.
Accurate Color for Movies and Games
The Cosmos offers three predefined picture modes. All offer essentially identical color accuracy at full saturation, and many people will consider any of them acceptable for casual viewing. However, Standard and Movie differ in tone mapping. Movie mode both brightens up dark scenes and dark areas in lighter scenes, to offer better shadow detail, and also delivers better color accuracy for midtones, a combination that makes it my preferred choice for most purposes, and the one I used for my viewing tests.
Game mode was similar in tone mapping to Standard, but, as tested, also turned off the video processing for both keystone correction and digital zoom to shorten lag time. (Anker says that new firmware now offers two settings for Game mode, one of which does not turn off keystone, and presumably has a longer lag.) Gamers will have to choose between Movie's better shadow detail and Game mode's shorter lag, which I measured using a Bodnar meter at 31.4ms for 1080p at 60Hz.
In my formal standard dynamic range (SDR) tests I spotted occasional colors, particularly reds and oranges, that were a little off in scenes I'm familiar with, but they never wandered outside the realm of realistic. More important, I didn't spot any serious issues in material I wasn't familiar with. A trained eye might notice a slight blue shift, but most people don't find minor blue shifts annoying. Dark scenes in the formal tests lost some of the shadow detail I know is in the original, but showed enough to make it easy to see what was happening in the scene.
The Cosmos also supports 4K (3,840 by 2,160 pixels) input, which it down-converts to its native 1080p resolution, and it supports HDR. However, as with most inexpensive projectors, it didn't handle HDR well in my tests. More precisely, it recognized the input as HDR10 without problems, but it lacks a feature often labeled as HDR Brightness, which is needed because the HDR10 standard allows the best setting to vary from one movie or video source to another. The result for the movies in our test suite was an overall darkening effect even in bright scenes, and severe loss of shadow detail. So, as is true for many inexpensive models that claim HDR support, you'll probably want to stay with SDR input when possible.
The 3D support for the Cosmos is for DLP-Link glasses and for top-bottom and side-by-side formats only. Note also that you have to switch between 2D and 3D modes manually. I saw no crosstalk in my tests, and only the minor level of 3D-related motion artifacts typical for current generation projectors. The image was also much brighter relative to the 2D modes than for most projectors, making it quite watchable at the same image size I used for 2D.
Very much on the plus side, I saw almost no rainbow artifacts (red-green-blue flashes), even though I see them easily. You can test this out for yourself, since Anker accepts returns within 30 days of purchase for any reason. However, you'll have to pay for the return shipping.
The Cosmos's brightness rating is 900 ANSI lumens. In my tests using Movie mode, the brightness was close to what I expect to see from about 500 lumens. For SDR material, it was bright enough to light up a 90-inch, 1.0-gain screen in a dark room. It's watchable under these circumstances, but a little washed out in low levels of ambient light. Using an 80-inch screen in a family room, the image was suitably bright to stand up to low to moderate room light at night, and watchable but washed out with daylight streaming through the windows.
A Small Projector That's Not a Lightweight
If you're considering the Cosmos, be sure to compare it with both the Miroir M1200S and Epson EF12. The M1200S's Aptoide apps aren't a match to Android TV equivalents, but the projector offers a little better image quality than the Cosmos. The Android TV-based EF12 doesn't offer 3D support, but it's brighter than the Cosmos and it delivers better color accuracy, a combination that makes it our Editors' Choice pick for the category.
If you're looking for still higher brightness, also consider the Epson EF-100, which offers a native resolution of only 1,280 by 800 pixels, but is rated at 2,000 lumens. And if you plan to set up for backyard movies more than occasionally, or want a room-to-room portable that you can also take on camping trips, you might want to consider the BenQ GS50, which offers ratings for water resistance and for surviving 2.3-foot falls.
All that said, the Anker Nebula Cosmos is the lightest projector in this group, which can be a key advantage if you plan to move it around a lot. It also offers more-than-acceptable image quality, Android TV, a Netflix app, 3D support, and a robust sound system. That adds up to easily enough to make it a solid value.
With an eye-catching oval shape and a bright image, the 1080p Anker Nebula Cosmos is a creditable contender among portable home entertainment projectors.
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