Sonos And IKEA Made A New SYMFONISK Floor Lamp Speaker

Sonos and IKEA are adding a new wireless speaker to their co-designed range, with the SYMFONISK Floor Lamp Speaker elevating both its sound and light. It's a derivative of the second-generation SYMFONISK Table Lamp Speaker which IKEA released at the start of 2022, only instead of being intended for a side-table or similar, the new model has a tall, three-legged stand.

In fact, it's not hard to see how IKEA has updated the design, here. For the most part, the speaker has the same form as before: a barrel-shaped, fabric-covered main body, with a trio of buttons for play/pause and adjusting volume. The foot section, however, has been swapped for one that links to a flared base, with a sturdy bottom plate to hopefully keep the whole thing stable. IKEA hasn't even hidden the power cable inside one of those legs, opting instead to run it with clips down on the outside.

The other big difference is the lamp shade itself. The SYMFONISK Floor Lamp Speaker will come with a large, bamboo shade, IKEA says, though it'll also be offering other versions that can be easily interchanged — and promises compatibility with existing SYMFONISK lamp shades.

Convenience is clearly the key goal, here. "We have learnt a great deal about how people want to furnish with light and sound. We also know that many people want to have several light sources on different levels and parts of the room to create the right mood," Stjepan Begic, Range Design Leader at IKEA of Sweden, said of the new lamp. "The challenge of not having enough room for a table to put the lamp on led us to create the floor lamp."

On the Sonos side, there's a surprisingly potent speaker that links with the home entertainment company's app and whole-home system. That allows for streaming media to be played, either to a single speaker or to a group of them.

As for the IKEA side of things, the SYMFONISK Floor Lamp Speaker can be added to the new DIRIGERA hub, and integrated into scenes with other smart home products.

There are more reasons than just mood lighting for why you might be interested in an elevated version of the IKEA speaker, mind. One of the more obvious applications for what are some of the most affordable Sonos-compatible models is for rear surround channels in a home theater setup. Like Sonos-branded speakers, the SYMFONISK range can be wirelessly linked and used as a rear stereo pair with a soundbar like the Beam or Ray.

For the best effect from rear surround speakers, though, you want them to be roughly ear-level with the people sitting down and watching the screen. While the SYMFONISK Bookshelf Speaker can be wall-mounted, and most models in Sonos' range have speaker mount holes, that requires wall brackets or stands.

The SYMFONISK Floor Lamp Speaker, in contrast, comes with that all built-in — and in a package that looks a little less geeky, ostensibly, than the usual surround sound speakers. It'll go on sale in all IKEA markets from January 2023, with U.S. pricing set at $260 per speaker.