IKEA and Sonos are back at it with another speaker that doubles as furniture. This time around, the companies are refreshing their Symfonisk table lamp speaker, and thank god it doesn’t look as hideous as the last one. In addition to better aesthetics, the table lamp also has upgraded its hardware for better sound.
If you don’t recall what the original Symfonisk lamp looked like… that’s for the best. The gist is that it had a goofy design, a rather large base, and came in limited colour options. Unlike the Symfonisk bookshelf speakers, it was a challenge getting the lamp to blend in with your home instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. With the new lamp, it seems that IKEA and Sonos knew they screwed up the first time around.
“Since launching the first Symfonisk table lamp speaker, we learned a lot about how and where they are being used. For example, a lot of people use the lamp speaker on a nightstand, which led us to create a new, slightly smaller lamp base,” said Stjepan Begic, product developer at IKEA, in a statement. “We’re now also offering customers more design choices, making the lamp speaker a better fit for their individual homes.”
This time it’s still kind of goofy, but at least it has a slightly smaller base and some interesting lampshade options. They’re still a very specific Scandinavian aesthetic, but this is IKEA. The downside is that instead of a single product, the Symfonisk table lamp is now being sold as two separate products: the speaker base, and the lampshade. The speaker base comes in black. The lampshades come in textile and glass materials, in either black or white. The new lamp will also support E26/E27 bulbs.
More importantly, what’s the speaker’s audio quality like? Sonos says it should be capable of a “more room-filling sound” thanks to a revamped acoustic architecture that uses “custom waveguides.” Like other Symfonisk speakers, the new lamp speaker can be grouped with other Sonos and Symfonisk speakers.
The new Symfonisk table lamp will be available starting October 12. The base will retail for $US140 ($192). The textile shade costs $US29 ($40), and the glass shade is slightly more expensive at $US39 ($54).
Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for local Australian pricing and availability.