La tecnologia barata d’IKEA a prova: bombetes Matter, sensors, carregadors i altaveus

This is a Philip's Hugh Smartboard, and I'd pay £55 to buy one of these here in the UK last week. That made me pretty angry. Then I found out, Ikea literally starting this year has decided to become a tech company. They've just had their biggest ever smart home push, and their light bulb is £70. So, I bought every single IKEA tech product I could find. No, literally. I bought then you giraffe lamp, I found smart tea lights. I even discovered a cabinet that secretly opens up into an entire gaming station. Where are you? So, carrying no fewer than 47 IKEA products, I scurried back home. Desperate to find out how this stuff can actually be as good value as it seems to be. It was not much of a scurry by the end. So they just started setting up these products. Obviously. prioritizing when you home the gaming closet. But right now at least this feels a little bit too good to be true. Like these mad lads made a Magsafe charger for 9 pounds. Yes, it's very light and it can wobble. But if you just stick it down, that's insane value. And the lighting, I thought this 7-pound smart bulb would have some very obvious caveat when I plug it in. But there's an app. You turn it on and off from your phone, there's a brightness slider to the side, and you can choose any color on the spectrum. I have found that Philips does also sell an affordable bulb, but even their absolute cheapest is three times the price of Ikea's. It's the same brightness as Ikea's. Oh yeah, and it scores an F in energy efficiency. Compared to a D. And the thing with all this Ikea stuff is it's still based on matter, which is the latest standard in smart homes designed to be. kind of like a shared language that lets all types of devices from all different companies play nice with each other. It means that I could say to this Alexa Hub Alexa Light Blue. Okay, that works. Or I can use a four pound IKEA Matter remote and it's so sick because clicking down turns the light on and off. You can scroll this wheel. It's seven out of ten satisfying. But then also press down at the bottom of the remote to switch.

which group of matter devices that I want to be controlling, the idea being that those devices could be almost anything. You've more of these. So this is the new Ikea color light strip. 13 pound by the way compared to the minimum that I can find Philips for which is 50. But I guess what they've cut to get there is this doesn't directly connect to anything. It's not matter. The only way you typically control it is this button to turn it on and off and this one to change color. But yeah, so what you can do then is connect it up to one of these matter smart plugs, which will then let my matter smart remote talk to it. And it has memory. When I turn it on, it's remembering what color it was set to before I turned it off. Am I noting out over furniture store LEDs? Yes, but the configurability here for the money is like everything I've been searching for. Well, so I thought at this point, things are about to take a dark turn soon. Ikea's also made a bunch of matter sensors. And yes, I've also managed to catch them all. So there's a 7-pound door sensor, which I've stuck inside the gaming cabinet, because it means that every time this door closes, this part of the sensor, which is just a magnet, changes the magnetic field. That's picked up by the whole effect sensor in the main body, which then sends a matter signal out to everything here, including all the non-smart stuff like these light strips. because of those matter plugs. That was so well timed. And then because it's configurable, I can also get it to like ping the notification to let me know that the door's been opened or closed. There's a motion sensor too, which can do the same thing but in response to it. Let's see you walking into the room. And you can do crazy stuff like this right here is I here's temperature and humidity sensor.

Five pound by the way, and you could set this so that the moment it picks up that the lights are making this cabinet hot beyond the certain point, they just get switched off. And by the way, this isn't just running matter, the universal language, it's matter, but based on a layer of technology called thread, which should be better than the more traditional Wi-Fi smart home tech at your. Thread essentially means that instead of each of your products needing to communicate with your Wi-Fi router first, they actually just talk directly to each other. And each one acts as its own signal repeater, so it extends the range way past most routers. And it's a self-healing system. So if one device goes down, another one can just fill in that gap and keep the network going. You do still need a hub. But the cool thing about Thread is that that hub can be any kind of new-ish smart home product, like an Amazon Echo or an Apple TV 4K. Things you might already have. To be clear, plenty of companies are already using this combination of the matter over the Fed. Just not at this price. I don't actually understand. But how is this even a viable business model? This is a five pound product. One pound is just tax here in the UK. So I here is making... four pounds from selling this. How in four pound are you managing to cover the temperature and humidity sensor itself? The system on a chip required to run the thing. The materials, the display, the assembly, the packaging, the cost of retail, and then somehow still keeping room to make a bit of profit. I've just gone into a bit of a rabbit hole online and turns out you can actually find the exact sensor that Ikea's using in one of their products, their air quality meter, which they're selling for 25 pounds. But it's this look.

The Sensereon Sen63C and if you search that up, this one sensor alone is worth like 28 pounds. See, obviously Ikea's getting massive bulk discounts on parts, but still, this would be a bit like if someone was selling a complete gaming PC for the price that you could also find. just like the graphics card inside of it alone. I think IKEA has a particularly strong incentive right now to establish themselves in this space. So they've chosen to make next to no money at all on this stuff. Because they know that they're already the home company and if they get this tech transition right they will also become the smart home company and that could be worth billions. I just tried some of their bedroom products. This stuff is not matter. That's actually a bit less smart but It might be even better value than the smart stuff. Like for one pound fifty apart, we've got things like the cabinet lights. They've got motion sensors inside to pick up when you open doors or drawers. Nice and bright too. And then the nightlight, you might remember I was absolutely in awe at Xiaomi's motion sensing nightlights. There are 12 pound. The IKEA nightlight is too pound. Still seems to work just as well. And last six months on battery apparently. There's an interesting thing I've started to notice with IKEA products. Oh. The works? This company is not really like most tech companies, where they come across like their designing products with one hive mind, and each product has the exact same philosophy. Every Ikea product, seemingly has its own assigned designer. Maybe it's like whoever came up with the idea for something becomes the lead producer of it, which is probably pretty normal when it comes to furniture. Kind of weirdly tech, because it means that each product functions a bit differently. But then the upside is some of this stuff is so creative.

Like look at this, really nice, witty, glass bowl. This way you tuck your stuff, like your keys, your chewing gum, your micro gameboy color, some reason. But then you can stick your phone onto this magnetic part, and that's a charger. And then press down, it's a light too. Don't worry, I'm just pretty delightful 15 pounds. These speakers are five pound each. I say each because the idea is you just press one button to pair two of them together. And you can do this, but up to a hundred of them. You probably shouldn't, they don't sound very good. But you can, and that's kind of fun. Or... Tea lights. Up until this point, I've only ever used real tea lights, but then, you know, they die after one use. All ones powered by those little coin-cell batteries that are a massive hassle to keep changing out. But Ikea has made a USB-C charging station where each tea light docks when you're done with it, links to confirm that it's charging, and then when charged, Ikea's claimed that they can last 35 hours each. But numbers aren't as crazy to me, so I test that at myself, and yeah, they weren't getting tea light battery tests. That's what we're right now. What are they sitting on? an IKEA table that is also an air purifier and credit to David Wall the thing so damn efficient pull out these clips that lets you take the top off then you can see your filter in case you want to change it a hidden compartment where the power supply hide is love that and then the cable wires through the back of the leg David can you organize my life keys oh and then my favorite the droffland you push the head to turn it on

and then it'll turn itself off after 15 minutes. Just enough time for a quick Pokemon champions. Then you can even take the light off and use it to make sure you can see away to the bathroom and night. Now there are some things I can see which partly explain the low prices. Like that the IKEA seems to refuse to give you batteries unless they absolutely have to. This giraffe takes double-ase, all of these sensors take triple-ase, and I guess that kind of helps IKEA, because then they can send you theirs. And then the charger for those batteries too. But I think the biggest thing is IKEA's volumes. I actually just cannot wrap my head around the fact that this company has sold over 140 million with this one bookshelf. So IKEA complies enormous orders for parts and get a very good deal doing so. and it actually feels like they specifically reuse those parts and as many different products as possible to maximize those savings. And even more importantly, unlike most companies who make home accessories, who probably sell a few thousand units and want to make big bucks with each one, I care! does not care, as long as they're making pennies per product, they're still doing fine overall. That's why for years now, I've been able to sell things at silo prices when they want to. Things like these simple sensors, and I guess now they're seeing it as their chance to start applying that to the smartphone. Now specifically, because matter is kind of like the stars are lining for right here. You might know that for the last decade, the smartphone was basically owned by premium companies like Phillips Hue, Sonos, Google Nest, because to actually make a smart home at work needed a ton of initial R&D, to create a system in a set of hardware where each thing can talk to each other. You had to be primarily a tech company. So, up until this point, there's been no such thing as the mass market middle ground, where someone goes in to buy a sofa or a cabinet.

but then casually adds a smart bolt to their basket just because it's right there at the tilt. It's been too complicated and price way too high, but matter is designed to fix that. In theory it takes away all of that expensive R&D that used to cost billions. All of that will my bulb actually talk to my speaker engineering. That's now baked into the standard itself. So you don't need to be a tech company anymore. You just need to make yourself matter compatible. and no one wins more from this than the company with hundreds of millions of people specifically walking through their doors while in the process of setting up a home. One area where it definitely does pay to go high end though is the eight-sleep bed our sponsor. Which I've been using for over a year at this point. Instead of the bed that I spent ten times more money on because I tested them and to my shock slush despair if this may be sleepbed off and it's not even close anymore because you know how every single sleep device measures your sleep score with a number, right? Well, it's leaper of just upgraded their app with a sleep agent powered by AI that can also tell you why you slept the way you did and then fix it. By the last two weeks, I've been knee-deep working on an investigation video and I've been stressed. But this app is not just noticing that and giving me suggestions for how to fix it by itself but it's also taking matters into its own hands and making 30 different adjustments while I sleep. And with my code boss, you can get $350 off the latest pod five. You have 30 days to try it but I don't think it'll be sending it back. It's falling apart guys. I know I did the whole feel about why all this matter stuff should be incredible, but it's been four days of living with our IKEA tech and it is not going well like this donut lamp which by the way on its own is already

kind of disappointing because it's the exact same tech as that 7-pound smart bulb. Same app, same features, but just now because it's in a mouth blown glass container, it's 55 pounds. It doesn't even have zone lighting or the ability to do gradients. But more importantly, How is the connection process this terrible? We've been going through loop after loop of discovery trying to find the thing. And after seven failed attempts it randomly works on the eighth, even though we've changed nothing. Some of the bulbs have the same thing. Like we put six of them in this column light over here. But them all the same day, five worked perfectly. One just would not connect. They tries to find it for two full minutes and then just says, unable to add accessory. I've noticed sometimes the QR code on the box lets you add these products onto a network. Other times it does not. And then the only thing that seems to work when that happens is resetting the hub and then manually entering the unique device numbers that you can find on the products. And while I've been dealing with that, some of the lights that originally set up fine have now started showing that they're offline when they're clearly on. I precious matter remote has gone super laggy sometimes. That should have turned it off. Didn't I care? What's the matter? You're on a planet. 100 times and see what the success rate is. Oh my god. I don't want to. This is content. No. No! Yes! How much longer do we have in this? 46 successes. Oh dear. Still, you know, you see that and then you think maybe it's just me. Then I looked online. Reddit is full of I-Bore IKEA's Matter Products. Nothing will connect. There's some positive reviews on the IKEA site. But then...

nearly as many one stars with pretty much each person talking through everything they've done to try and get this stuff to work and then how it still doesn't. I've found someone who's tried to pair 59 of these matter emotes and they've only managed to successfully pair 29. They've got this 11 step troubleshooting technique they followed and according to them it fixed nothing so they're estimating a 50% defect rate which kind of Horavinely lines up with the near 50% negative reviews on their site, and the 50% success rate of the remote. And in regardless of which way you look at it, it's completely unheard of. What if your car only started 50% of the time? The more I look into this, the more it feels like ultimately, matter is just not ready. It could be, and it should be the solution. And one day it still might be, but it seems like the main company who built that Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. They invested in it because it helped to promote the idea that anyone could have a smart home. But individually none of the matchday has an incentive for it to succeed. If matter becomes a viable mainstream smart home solution, then... who's going to pay three times the price for a Google Nest branded doorbell. How will Amazon make sure that you also subscribe to Prime and do all of your shopping on Amazon.com? Matter will basically open up the gates for companies like Ikea to whip up something for a five-hour that works just as well, and that's not going to lock you into any company's ecosystem. You'll notice as well if you pay close attention that Samsung has actually been...

really great with all this matter stuff. Their smart things is usually among the first platforms to support each new matter version, often within a few months of release. But Apple, Google, Amazon, sometimes we're talking a year behind for the same updates, and that's probably not random. Samsung is the most aggressive, because Samsung has the least to protect. They don't have the dominant voice assistant or the dominant phony ecosystem. So an open standard like matter has a lot of upsides for them. They make tons of stuff like fridges, washes, and ovens. All matters going to do is help those products work better in other company systems. It's really those companies, the ones who make those systems like Amazon who have the most to lose. And so, are the most... reluctantly trudging towards actually making matter good. And instead focusing their efforts on trying to ensure that the best experience with their products comes when you use all of them and you do so via their app. And it feels like all of this politics has left IKEA a little bit stuck. They clearly saw the potential of matter they dived headfirst into it but it's just not ready yet. And while IKEA are not the only one supporting matter, the difference is that IKEA's products depend on matter because They don't have their own robust ecosystem to fall back on. So for the sake of making this smart, home-dream accessible to the masses, I really hope I can get over this incredibly bumpy start. But I'm not holding my breath.