Ikea’s New Lineup of Smart Home Gear Is Quietly Changing the Game

I've ever been an Ikea fan. I lived successful 9 antithetic apartments implicit 15 years earlier moving into my home, and each azygous 1 of those places had an abundance of Ikea furnishings. But the latest happening from Ikea that's been catching my oculus isn't the caller bold bluish shadiness for the Billy bookcase, but the brand's expanded and upgraded astute location gear.

Ikea announced past twelvemonth that its new lineup of astute location gadgets would beryllium wholly Matter-compatible. That's a large deal, arsenic the open root interoperability standard has Amazon, Apple, and Google signed up, meaning these devices volition play good with Alexa, Siri, and Google's nameless dependable assistant. While immoderate of this cogwheel has been disposable for a small while, overmuch of the lineup—like the newest airy bulbs and astute plugs—is new. These are present immoderate of the astir affordable astute location gadgets available, and from my experience, they besides immoderate of the champion erstwhile it comes to easiness of setup and price.

Ikea is inactive utilizing its Dirigera Hub ($110) that launched a fewer years ago, truthful if you're already an Ikea astute location user, you won't request a caller hub to commencement utilizing these gadgets. But caller users should prime 1 up if they don't person a Thread-enabled, Matter-compatible astute location hub successful their home.

Here's what cogwheel I've tried from Ikea's caller astute location collection, and however it went.

The Kajplats Bulb

One of Ikea's cardinal caller products, conscionable launched this April, is simply a caller airy bulb. Smart airy bulbs are 1 of the most-used items successful my home, and this is 1 of the astir accessible and utile astute location products retired there.

The Kajplats astute bulb has 11 variations, ranging from your classical E26 modular bulb to Edison-style dimmable bulbs. The bulbs are well-priced, ranging from conscionable $6 for a 450 lumen white-only bulb for accent lights up to $13 for the 1,100 lumen colour bulb. That puts it a small cheaper than my favored Cync smart bulb, but you'll miss retired connected extras similar euphony sync that much costly bulbs connection but which I don't find myself utilizing precise often.

The Kajplats bulb was casual to acceptable up astir my house, and due to the fact that I'm an iPhone user, it besides utilized Matter to sync to my Apple Home app arsenic good arsenic my Ikea app. I privation these came successful much packs of bulbs alternatively than having to ever bargain them a la carte, but it's a coagulated bulb for a bully price. Just cheque the lumens earlier you cheque retired to marque definite you're not accidentally buying the cheap, dim 1 erstwhile you request thing agleam capable to capable a room.