Ikea’s new smart home gear is invading my house

I have always been an Ikea fan. I lived in nine different apartments for 15 years before moving home, and each of those places had an abundance of Ikea furniture. But the latest thing from Ikea that caught my eye wasn’t the Billy bookcase’s bold new blue hue, but the brand’s expanded and improved smart home gear.

Ikea announced last year that its new range of smart home gadgets would be entirely compatible with the material. It’s a big problem, like open source interoperability standard Amazon, Apple, and Google are signed up, meaning these devices will work well with Alexa, Siri, and Google’s anonymous voice assistant. Although some of this equipment has been available for a while, much of the range, like the latest smart bulbs and plugs, is new. These are now some of the most affordable smart home gadgets available, and in my experience, they’re also among the best in terms of ease of installation and price.

Ikea still uses its Direct Hub ($110) launched a few years ago, so if you’re already an Ikea smart home user, you won’t need a new hub to start using these gadgets. But new users should choose one if they don’t have a Thread-enabled account, Compatible with the material smart home hub in their home.

Here’s the amenities I tried from Ikea’s new smart home collection and how it went.

The dock light bulb

One of Ikea’s main new products, launched last April, is a new light bulb. Smart light bulbs are one of the most used items in my home, and it’s one of the most accessible and useful smart home products.

THE Smart bunk bulb has 11 variations, ranging from your classic standard E26 bulb to Dimmable Edison Style Light Bulbs. The bulbs are inexpensive, ranging from just $6 for a 450 lumen white bulb only for accent lighting up to $13 for the 1,100 lumen color bulb. This makes it a little cheaper than my favorite Cync smart bulbbut you’ll miss out on extras like music syncing that more expensive bulbs offer but which I don’t use very often.

The Kajplats bulb was easy to install in my home and, as I’m an iPhone user, it also used Matter to sync with my Apple Home app as well as my Ikea app. I wish these came in more bulb packs rather than always having to buy them a la carte, but it’s a solid bulb at a good price. Just check the lumens before you go to make sure you don’t accidentally buy a cheap, dimmed model when you need something bright enough to fill a room.

Although you cannot collect these bulbs into bundles, you can get a bulb comes with Ikea’s new smart home remote, the Bilresa, for $10.

The car travel remote control

THE Road trip the smart remote is downright adorable. It lets you connect to Ikea’s range of lights, sockets, smart speakers and more so you can quickly control it without saying a word. It’s almost like a smart switch, since you can use the included mounting plate and sticky adhesive to mount it in your home, but there’s also a magnetic backing that I used to attach it directly to the refrigerator.

It comes in three colors, although you can only purchase the white color individually; to get the tomato red and soft green you will need to purchase the three pack. There is also the choice of spending a little more on get one with a wheel– ideal for adjusting the brightness of a smart light, for example – or simply buttons. Button only models are $6 individually And $15 for a three-packmaking it a really cheap investment for such a handy little device. These, however, require AAA batteries, which are not included. I tested with Ladda Batteries from Ikea ($9 for four).

So far, my red remote (chosen to match my living room!) is doing a good job of quickly controlling my living room lights. It was quick to connect in the app and easy to open the front to insert the batteries with a flathead screwdriver (or, perhaps, the butter knife I had nearby). The app makes it easy to assign to a room and allows you to manage up to three product groups. This little remote was a nice break for me as a reviewer who’s constantly changing her lights and setting things up for my Amazon smart speaker over and over again – since there’s only one button to click, they’d also be ideal attached to a bedside table to turn off your lights without having to get up.

The Myggspray motion sensor

A few new sensors have been launched as part of the new Ikea range, ranging from door sensors and temperature sensors to even a water leak sensor. I tried the Myggspray Wireless Motion Sensor ($8) At my house. I originally intended to use it to know when my son leaves his room in the middle of the night, but the design is actually meant to turn on the lights when you enter the room. Since it doesn’t have a motion history that you can view, I set it up in my bedroom to control this light.

There are controls in the app for what the motion sensor should do when it no longer sees motion, but there’s no setting to confirm that it’s supposed to turn on the light when it sees motion. You can also set a schedule for when it should respond to movement, so that a trip to the bathroom at midnight or a visit from my child after a nightmare at 3 a.m. doesn’t light up my entire room.

It didn’t work right away, but after letting the motion sensor and its settings marinate in the app (and with the hub), I was able to start walking through my room to get my light to turn on instantly. Since this is a room without a switch for the outlets we actually use in the room, I’m glad to stop stumbling around in the dark until I reach the lamp.

The Ikea experience

Unlike other Ikea products in my house, these gadgets arrived without the need to lift or twist a small hex wrench. Yet they offer the affordability, convenience, and style you expect from the brand. The Ikea Home Smart app quickly recognized each device once I plugged it in and used Matter to connect to my iPhone’s Home app for cross-platform control. I also really liked the clarity of the experience in the app, and it seemed easy to understand how everything worked and what I could connect it to.

Especially with its affordable price, this smart home ecosystem is easy to integrate. It’s not expensive and you won’t need to be a tech expert. It’s also funny that it’s part of such a popular house brand; I’m curious to see if I’ll spot any displays of these products on my next Ikea trip.

Even after a month of letting this equipment invade my house, I’m not finished and I’m now going to try the Ikea one. new smart plugA smart version of the viral donut lampand some pint-sized Bluetooth speakers.

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