Designed by IKEA, and Powered by Sonos, you’re looking at the Symfonisk, a range of offerings by the two collaborating companies. Designed as a table-lamp-speaker and a bookshelf-speaker, the Symfonisk aim at merging home-decor with smart-technology, and powerful audio to create products that simply enrich houses. The table-lamp comes with a lamp and lampshade at the top and a speaker at the bottom, while the bookshelf speaker is designed to occupy the spatial footprint of an encyclopedia (something that’s sorely missed from today’s bookshelves).
Designed in signature IKEA fashion, the lamp and speaker sport a home-friendly design, and can be customized. The lamp comes with a detachable lampshade and the ability to put a bulb of your choice in it, while the bookshelf speaker can be placed horizontally, vertically, or even be hacked to be used as a wall-mounted shelf! Both products use a combination of plastic and fabric, and IKEA’s designed them to be easy to pull apart and clean (IKEA even experimented with chucking parts in the dishwasher!)
As far as the audio hardware is concerned, Sonos told The Verge that both products have two class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer. Given their size and their relatively starting-range price, the speakers won’t quite match up to the standard set by Sonos’ other products, but the idea was to partner with IKEA to build truly uplifting home-decor, which I can’t help but agree with! The lamp and speaker are both controlled by Sonos’ mobile app (and they support Apple AirPlay 2 too), with support for IKEA’s own smart-home app coming soon.
Designers: IKEA & Sonos
