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Cosmos by Black Box Magic Creations
Let’s not beat around the bush; Cosmos is the first thermal printer made for magic that doesn’t cost a fortune.
When you purchase Cosmos you receive a nice box with a clasp, a bifold wallet with the printer inside, a charger, and multiple types of thermal paper (blank, lined, booktest, NY Lotto, and CA Lotto.) In the box is a QR code that takes you to a pdf that has a link to the app you’ll need (iOS and Android,) and a link to a google drive containing all of the explanation videos.
The quality of the wallet itself doesn’t necessarily feel like the most luxurious wallet on the market. It feels like a cheap wallet. There are even components on the circuit board that appear hot glued on. The good news is that the spectators can’t hold the wallet anyway, so they’ll only see it from afar, and it looks fine. The wallet contains some usable credit card slots and a pocket for paper bills, as you’d expect for a bifold wallet, although I’d be scared to use it as my everyday wallet because of the electronics housed inside. I’d be afraid I’d forget about them, put it in my back pocket, and sit on them. You also have to be a little conscious of the fact that there is a battery in the bill compartment. If you tip the wallet upside down, the battery can slide out and dangle on its cord, which isn’t a great look. I plan to use double-sided tape to hold my battery in place because mine tends to slip out a lot more than you’d think.
The printer aspect works great as you’d expect from a thermal printer. One thing to note is that the prediction paper comes from a zipped compartment in the wallet and it will come out in a crumbled mess. It can’t come out folded nice and neat because of the mechanism, so it comes out sort of accordion “folded” as the printed paper gets pressed against the inside of the zipper. I actually kind of like the look for casual performances because it looks like a piece of paper that you’ve stuffed into your wallet and forgotten about, but for a stage show or something more formal, it probably looks a little too casual. It makes a little bit of sound as it prints that you’ll need to cover, but if it’s in your back pocket, it's almost silent.
The great thing about Cosmos is that it comes with a free app that already has several effects built into it. Right out of the box you can perform a lotto prediction, a book test, a digital clock reveal, an analog clock reveal, and a magic square. You can also print images directly from your phone’s gallery or make your own templates. The app is a bit confusing. It’s not the most intuitive UI. It takes really watching all of the tutorials to fully understand the workings, and even then, I had to go back and rewatch them when it was time to test the wallet. I hear they are completely reshooting the entire tutorial, so hopefully that will help with the ease of learning. As of right now, the tutorial is broken up into a basic tutorial which is an 18-minute long walk through of what you receive, how to load the paper, how to connect the app, and the basic features of the app. Then there are several shorter videos to help you find specific things you’re looking for without having to go back through the main tutorial.
The app has a couple of different input methods: a fake notes screen, a fake calculator, print image, hand drawing, writing-to-text recognizer, and API for other apps such as Inject and WikiTest. All of them look good. The notes dupe and the calculator dupe look very close to the iPhone’s. No one will notice. You’ll need a good excuse to write the word down or add the numbers up. It would be most deceptive to have a stooge do it, but they do have a proximity sensor option, which means the spectator could type in their word/number/drawing/etc. and put the phone facedown on the table or against their chest, and it will automatically send the information to the printer. The benefit here is that the performer never needs to know the chosen item.
Of the routines included, the booktest is my favorite. They name any word they want and there is a torn piece of a page from a book in your wallet that has their word highlighted or circled. I think it’s genius. It takes some playing around with to learn how to position the page precisely in the wallet so that it comes out perfectly, but after two attempts, I had it down.
The other big one is the lottery prediction. They name any 5 numbers 1-70 and a Powerball number 1-26 and you remove a lottery ticket from your wallet that has those numbers printed on it. This is a classic for a reason. The idea that an old lottery ticket that’s hanging out in your wallet precisely matches the numbers they just named is just so freaking impossible, it’s mind-blowing.
As mentioned earlier, you can also create your own templates to make a confabulation routine or make it look like a movie ticket or whatever you want. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the “handwritten” notes because it’s just impossible for it not to look printed. I think it’s more deceptive when it looks like the predicted item was already printed on the page like in the lotto prediction and book test. Trying to pass it off as something you “wrote” just isn’t very convincing to me. I do wish they had a thermal paper that looked like a receipt on the back side. Then it could seem like you found a receipt in your wallet and wrote something on it. You still have the issue of the handwriting looking printed, but at least it justifies the paper a bit more.
Overall, I’m really impressed by this. Especially at the price. It all feels a little cheaply made, but it works reliably, and it opens up so many possibilities. If you’ve wanted to do these types of effects but didn’t want to dish out $1,200–this is an awesome alternative. I think for a parlor or stage performer, there are better printers out there (there’s a new Cosmos printer built for a case that may be more appropriate for those workers), but for the casual performer or restaurant worker, this is pretty incredible.
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