IKEA’s upgraded hub and app make smart homes even smarter

(Image credit: IKEA)

published 26 October 2022

We're big fans of IKEA's TRADFRI smart bulbs, not least because they're very affordable. But IKEA's range has lagged behind rivals such as Hue, and things hadn't changed significantly since we compared TRADFRI vs Hue some time ago. That's about to change. There's a brand new IKEA smart home app available for download today, and its brand new DIRIGERA smart home hub should appear in your local store in the next few days.

The new hub is compatible with your existing IKEA Home Smart purchases, but it's your future smart home stuff that really matters here.

Why IKEA's DIRIGERA is a big smart home deal

It's not implemented just yet – the feature will come in a near-future firmware upgrade – but the DIRIGERA will support Matter, the new smart home standard that aims to make everything much more interoperable. As someone who's previously had to install obscure apps to get early-model TRADFRI bulbs to play nice with a Hue hub, that interoperability can't come soon enough.

The vision here is for the IKEA smart home app to launch "scenes" that combine different kinds of devices – IKEA suggests sound, lighting, blinds, coffee machines and air purification – into scenes that you can trigger manually or at specific times. As the PR bumph puts it: "Imagine waking up in a bedroom with clean air, your blinds slowly going up while the lamps gradually brighten the room – all accompanied by your favourite music and the smell of fresh coffee being brewed."

I haven't had the opportunity to test the new hub but multiple reviews say that it and the new app work really well together, are easy to use and seem to be perfectly stable too. Migrating existing TRADFRI bulbs appears to be seamless, and the only real niggle appears to be that the new hub is more expensive than the old one – $69 / €59, which is about £51.

That said, it's worth reading The Verge's review in particular as there are some issues around Sonos products: the new hub needs speakers running Sonos's S2 operating system, which rules out the first-generation Play:5 smart speaker.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).