Ikea's Smart Home Reset Goes Back to Basics

Ikea’s new 21-product series of bulbs, sensors, and remotes is dirt cheap, idiot-proof, Matter-ready, and designed to work with everything. But it's still years from the promised house of the future.

Not another damn light bulb. That’s what you might be thinking if you’ve been following smart-home tech for the past decade or, indeed, building out your own fortress of missed connections.

The first Nest thermostat launched in 2011, Philips Hue in 2012, the Amazon Echo in 2014. But for anyone who has spent long nights scrolling through IoT troubleshooting forums since then, here’s the latest: It’s finally time for a do-over. Everyone’s agreed that the open source interoperability standard Matter, which has Apple, Google, and Amazon signed up, is the answer, and Ikea has 20-odd new and improved devices to boost the case.

The Details

It’s very much back to basics ...