Ikeas cheap new smart home gear is struggling to get connected

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying — and mostly failing — to test Ikea’s new Matter-over-Thread gear. These highly anticipated smart home devices include programmable buttons, smart bulbs, plugs, and temperature and motion sensors — all of which should work with any smart home platform and start at just $6.

But I’ve hit several walls trying to connect them to any smart home platform, and I’m not alone. The Tradfri subreddit is filled with Ikea customers sharing similar frustrations, reviews on Ikea’s website point to issues, and colleagues at The Verge have also been having problems.

Of the six devices I’ve tried to connect, I’ve so far successfully onboarded just one Kajplats smart lightbulb to Apple Home — after seven attempts — and one Alpstuga IAQ monitor to Home Assistant — after failing to pair with Apple Home.

A Bilresa smart button initially connected to Amazon Alexa, then fell off the network and refused to re-pair. The Timmerflotte temperature sensor and Myggspray motion sensor just flat-out refused to connect to anything, even Ikea’s own Dirigera hub.

While plenty of people have had no problems, there have been enough posts on user forums about being unable to connect the new devices — or struggling through multiple resets before pairing — to suggest my issues weren’t just a result of my wildly overcomplicated network, and could be indicative of a bigger problem. One Reddit user posted a particularly eyebrow-raising example: of the 60 Ikea Bilresa buttons they tried to pair, only 31 connected, for a 52 percent success rate.

Additionally, after a few weeks in people’s homes, a handful of users are now reporting trouble keeping devices connected once they’re finally paired. The Verge’s David Pierce had this problem with the Bilresa smart button connected via Amazon Alexa, and a few users on the Ikea Tradfri subreddit have had issues with the Kajplats light bulbs.

These are Ikea’s first products to use Matter-over-Thread, rather than Zigbee, the connectivity protocol its previous Tradfri smart home line relied on. The main benefit of Matter is that devices should connect directly to any of the major platforms — Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings — without needing Ikea’s Dirigera hub or a cloud connection. You should also be able to connect to more than one platform through Matter’s multi-admin feature. Right now, I’d settle for being able to connect to just one!

I reached out to Ikea, and David Granath, range manager for smart home at Ikea, told me they are aware of the problems and are investigating. “The launch of our Matter range has been highly anticipated, and for most customers the products work seamlessly, as intended,” he said. “That said, we are aware that some customers are experiencing connection issues when setting up their devices in certain home environments, and we take that very seriously.

“We have a dedicated team reviewing the raised concerns and working closely with our ecosystem partners, and the Connectivity Standards Alliance, to better understand the issues and improve the experience,” Granath continued, adding that the team will share more when they can. In the meantime, they offered some troubleshooting tips.

The rollout of new technology is often fraught with issues, as Ikea knows well. And as Granath implied, the sheer variety of network setups and environments in the smart home can be hard to anticipate. It’s only once products hit the real world that some issues become visible. But while connectivity and setup failures initially plagued Matter devices, a concerted push by the CSA last year appears to have fixed most of them.

The difference here could be that this is one of the first large-scale deployments of Matter-over-Thread devices. As I’ve reported previously, the Thread network infrastructure is not only confusing for users but also the least robust, thanks in part to the ongoing lack of interoperability among Thread border routers.

However, the fact that so many people are experiencing problems suggests a bigger issue than just users’ setups. What that issue is remains unclear; it could be how Ikea implemented the Matter spec, an issue with how the devices interact with specific platforms, or something in the Matter spec itself.

Ikea, the CSA, and the platform makers need to figure this out quickly. The launch of Ikea’s inexpensive Matter devices was supposed to be a breakthrough moment for the smart home — proof that the standard was finally ready for the mass market. Instead, it’s looking like yet another reminder that in the smart home, the hardest part is still just getting things to work.