Ikea will sell its custom Sonos speakers starting in August

Sonos and Ikea have fully unveiled the pair of speakers on which the two companies have been collaborating for years. The Symfonisk table lamp ($ 179) and the library speaker ($ 99) will both be delivered in August. You can control them with the Sonos app, which will allow each speaker to fully integrate into a multiroom audio setup.

"The products will provide something that both companies are extremely proud of," said Patrick Spence, CEO of Sonos, in a recent interview with The edge, which also included Björn Block, Ikea's global business leader. "We did everything in our power on the IKEA side and Sonos did exactly the same thing," Block said.

Spence suggested that the audio performance of the lamp be similar to that of the Sonos One at $ 199, if one of the ranks is less than or equal to two. It has a dial on the body of the lamp to control the volume and there are track control buttons on the base plate part. (They are not visible in these promotional images.) The lamp does not include a ready-to-use smart bulb, so you have to buy it separately.

Image: Ikea / Sonos

Block said that, finally, Ikea's smart home app will incorporate music controls for the speakers, allowing customers to create scenes that take into account the lamp, Ikea's smart blinds and all light bulbs. you own. (The Sonos speakers can already be fully controlled by Spotify, iHeartRadio and other applications, so the extension to Ikea is not a surprise, given the importance of this partnership.) Who needs an alarm clock when the lamp in your room can ring music and turn on the light in the morning?

The bookshelf is the smallest speaker Sonos has ever made (and it's smaller than you'd expect because of its name). So I do not really hope it will produce a breathtaking sound. Spence has more or less confirmed that the speaker of the shelf would not have the same punch at the low end as the usual range of the company.

But he also said that Sonos' TruePlay feature, which tunes a speaker's audio output based on its position in a room, dramatically improves sound quality for lamps and shelves. Spence is confident that the two speakers will sound better than anything else at their respective prices. I'd like the speaker on the shelf to have a rechargeable battery inside – this seems like a good size to go outside for a party – but this is not a good idea. is not the case. Whatever it is, like most Ikea things, I think the goal here was to do something good enough for the masses.

Image: Ikea / Sonos

With regard to the technical specifications, this is all the more information that Sonos is willing to give:

Lamp:

• Two class D digital amplifiers
• A tweeter
• A mid-woofer
• Sealed case

Shelf speaker:

• Two class D digital amplifiers
• A tweeter
• A mid-woofer
• Worn case

Of course, the size of these components differs from one product to another, even if the internal structure seems similar.

The lamp and the library speakers will be full members of the Sonos ecosystem. They can join an existing configuration or serve as an entry into the multiroom audio. If you buy two of them, you can pair them in stereo or even use them as backs in a 5.1 audio setup, assuming you already have a Playbase, Playbar or Sonos Beam. To your knowledge, how many 5.1 systems include lamps like rear speakers?) Both speakers also support Apple's AirPlay 2 for playing music from many applications or with voice commands via Siri.

Image: Ikea / Sonos

If you are wondering who is responsible for what on the manufacturing side, it sounds like a mutual effort. "It's developed jointly," said Spence. The edge. "We build some things on the board and then we give them to Ikea." The two Symfonisk speakers share chips with the Sonos One, but no microphone is built into any device. In addition, both feature traditional physical buttons for music controls, as opposed to the touch buttons on the Sonos speakers. Ikea and Sonos both claim that this is just the first phase of their partnership. Therefore, future speakers could very well offer the support of Alexa.

Ikea's Block said that the retailer's research had shown that 59% of surveyed customers cited music as the main factor of a "good mood". The company uses cheap Bluetooth speakers, but Mr Block said that Ikea had gotten behind a speaker that sounds good. That's where Sonos came in. According to Spence, Ikea's creations – and the mere idea of ​​equipping a lamp with a loudspeaker – forced Sonos to be creative and to approach these products differently. .

Image: Ikea / Sonos

Is it possible that some people choose one of these new products rather than a standard Sonos speaker? Certainly. But Spence does not seem particularly bothered by this notion. "We thought about it a lot," he said, noting that Symfonisk loudspeakers would help Sonos reach a lower price and a range of customers that the company might not have pursued alone. (The old Play: 1 costs $ 149 and is therefore less expensive than the lamp, but Sonos does not really care about this part of its modern range at this point.)

"If that's the direction that customers want to take, and we're really getting a spark around the furniture and the sound, then we're going to pour gas on that fire."