Today, IKEA announced that they would be updating their range of smart home lighting products to have support for the Google Assistant and Google Home (as well as other products that have Google Assistant). Meaning that you’ll be able to leave that pesky remote alone and simply tell Google to turn off your lights, if you wish to do so. The company announced that this update will be coming later this summer, so those interested in getting some new smart lights from IKEA that work with Google Assistant will need to wait just a bit.
With IKEA, getting started is pretty similar to Philips HUE. Where you’ll need to pick up their gateway, which actually comes with two bulbs for $79.99. After you get the gateway, you are able to use whatever bulbs you want, which work with the gateway. This makes the bulbs themselves smaller, as well as cheaper. Pricing for the bulbs actually range from $12 to $40, which is much cheaper than other alternatives out there, like LIFX and Philips HUE which are typically around $40 per bulb these days. IKEA already has plenty of bulbs available, and they’ll be adding more and more over time, expanding their selection.
IKEA also mentioned in their press release today that they’ll be adding support for the other big platforms – Amazon Alexa and Apple Homekit. This means that if you own an Amazon Echo, you’ll also be able to shout at Alexa to turn off your lights. But you’ll also be able to turn your lights off when you aren’t even home, which is also pretty useful. IKEA is pretty popular for their pretty cheap furniture, that you do typically have to put together yourself. And they have been a bit slow to jump into the smart home lighting space, but they appear to now be jumping in head first with plenty of products available already. IKEA does have some great prices on these smart light bulbs, and if you’ve been looking for some smart lighting, you’ll know that these are indeed the cheapest ones available. They’ll be getting updated this summer, but IKEA hasn’t said exactly when that will be.