This is a Philips Huegh smart bulb and I

had to pay £55 to buy one of these here

in the UK last week. That made me pretty

angry. Then I found out IKEA literally

starting this year has decided to become

a tech company. They've just had their

biggest ever smarthome push and their

light bulb is £7. So I bought every

single IKEA tech product I could find.

No, literally. I bought their new

giraffe lamp. I found smart tea lightss.

I even discovered a cabinet that

secretly opens up into an entire gaming

station. Where are you?

So, carrying no fewer than 47 IKEA

products, I scured back home, desperate

to find out how this stuff can actually

be as good value as it seems to be. It

was not much of a scurry by the end.

So, I've only just started setting up

these products, obviously prioritizing

my new home, the gaming closet. But

right now, at least this feels a little

bit too good to be true. Like these mad

lads made a MagSafe charger for £9. Yes,

it's very light and it can wobble. But

if you just stick it down, that's insane

value. And the lighting. I thought this

£7 smart bulb would have some very

obvious caveat when I plugged that in.

But there's an app. You turn it on and

off from your phone. There's a

brightness slider to the side and you

can choose any color on the spectrum. I

have found that Philips does also sell

an affordable bulb, but even their

absolute cheapest is three times the

price of IKEA's. It's the same

brightness as IKEA's. Oh, yeah. And it

scores an F in energy efficiency

compared to a D. And the thing with all

this IKEA stuff is it's still based on

matter, which is the latest standard in

smart homes designed to be kind of like

a shared language that lets all types of

devices from all different companies

play nice with each other. It means that

I could say to this Alexa hub, "Alexa,

light blue."

Okay.

Okay, that works. Or I can use a 4B IKEA

matter remote. And it's so sick cuz

clicking down turns the light on and

off. You can scroll this wheel. 7 out of

10 satisfying. But then also press down

at the bottom of the remote to switch

which group of matter devices that I

want to be controlling. The idea being

that those devices could be almost

anything, even one of these. So, this is

the new IKEA color light strip. £13, by

the way, compared to the minimum that I

can find fillets for, which is 50. But I

guess what they've cut to get there is

this doesn't directly connect to

anything. It's not matter. The only way

you typically control it is this button

to turn it on and off and this one to

change color. But yeah, so what you can

do then is connect it up to one of these

matter smart plugs, which will then let

my Mattera smart remote talk to it. And

it has memory. When I turn it on, it's

remembering what color it was set to

before I turned it off. Am I nerding out

over furniture store LEDs? Yes, but the

configurability here for the money is

like everything I've been searching for.

Or so I thought at this point. Things

are about to take a dark turn soon. IKEA

has also made a bunch of matter sensors.

And yes, I've also managed to catch them

all. So, there's a 7 lb door sensor

which I've stuck inside the gaming

cabinet cuz it means every time this

door closes, this part of the sensor,

which is just a magnet, changes the

magnetic field that's picked up by the

hall effect sensor in the main body,

which then sends a matter signal out to

everything here, including all the

non-smart stuff like these light strips

because of those matter plugs.

That was so well timed. And then because

it's configurable, I can also get it to

like ping me a notification to let me

know that the door has been opened or

closed. There's a motion sensor, too,

which can do the same thing, but in

response to, let's say, you walking into

the room. And you can do crazy stuff

like this. Right here is IKEA's

temperature and humidity sensor. £5, by

the way. And you could set this so that

the moment it picks up that the lights

are making this cabinet hot beyond a

certain point, they just get switched

off. And by the way, this isn't just

running matter, the universal language.

It's matter, but based on a layer of

technology called Thread, which should

be better than the more traditional

Wi-Fi smart home tech of Bu. Thread

essentially means that instead of each

of your products needing to communicate

with your Wi-Fi router first, they

actually just talk directly to each

other. And each one acts as its own

signal repeater. So, it extends the

range way past most routters. And it's a

self-healing system. So if one device

goes down, another one can just fill in

that gap and keep the network going. You

do still need a hub, but the cool thing

about Thread is that that hub can be any

kind of newish smartome product like an

Amazon Echo or an Apple TV 4K, things

you might already have. To be clear,

plenty of companies are already using

this combination of matter over thread,

just not at this price. I don't actually

understand like how is this even a

viable business model? This is a £5

product. One pound is just tax here in

the UK. So IKEA is making4 pound from

selling this. How in4 pound are you

managing to cover the temperature and

humidity sensor itself, the system on a

chip required to run the thing, the

materials, the display, the assembly,

the packaging, the cost of retail, and

then somehow still keeping room to make

a bit of profit. Okay, I've just gone

into a bit of a rabbit hole online and

turns out you can actually find the

exact sensor that IKEA is using in one

of their products, their air quality

meter, which they're selling for £25.

But it's this look, the Sension Sen 63C.

And if you search that up, this one

sensor alone is worth like £28. So yeah,

obviously IKEA is getting massive bulk

discounts on parts, but still this would

be a bit like if someone was selling a

complete gaming PC for the price that

you could also find just like the

graphics card inside of it alone. I

think IKEA has a particularly strong

incentive right now to establish

themselves in this space. So, they've

chosen to make next to no money at all

on this stuff because they know that

they're already the home company and if

they get this tech transition right,

they will also become the smart home

company and that could be worth

billions. I've just tried some of their

bedroom products and this stuff is not

matter. It's actually a bit less smart,

but it might be even better value than

the smart stuff. Like for £150 a pop,

we've got things like the cabinet

lights. They've got motion sensors

inside to pick up when you open doors or

drawers. Nice and bright, too. And then

the nightlight. You might remember I was

absolutely in awe at Xiaomi's motion

sensing nightlights. They're £12. The

IKEA nightlight is £2. Still seems to

work just as well and lasts 6 months on

battery apparently. There's an

interesting thing I've started to notice

with IKEA products.

Oh, still works.

This company is not really like most

tech companies where they come across

like they're designing products with one

hive mind and each product has the exact

same philosophy. Every IKEA product

seemingly has its own assigned designer.

Maybe it's like whoever came up with the

idea for something becomes the lead

producer of it, which is probably pretty

normal when it comes to furniture, but

kind of weird with tech cuz it means

that each product functions a bit

differently. But then the upside is some

of this stuff is so creative. Like look

at this really nice weighty glass bowl.

This is where you chuck your stuff like

your keys, your chewing gum, your micro

Game Boy Color

for some reason. But then you can stick

your phone onto this magnetic park and

that's a charger. And then press down.

It's a light too. I don't know about

you, but I think that's pretty

delightful for £15. These speakers are

£5 each. I say each because the idea is

you just press one button to pair two of

them together. And you can do this with

up to a hundred of them. You probably

shouldn't. They don't sound very good,

but you can, and that's kind of fun. Or

tea lights. Up until this point, I've

only ever used real tea lights, but

then, you know, they die after one use.

Or ones powered by those little coin

cell batteries that are a massive hassle

to keep changing out. But IKEA has made

a USBC charging station where each

telight docks when you're done with it,

blinks to confirm that it is charging.

And then when charged, IKEA has claimed

that they can last 35 hours each. That

number sounded crazy to me, so I tested

it myself. And uh yeah, they weren't

kidding. Teite battery tests. That's

where we're at now. What are they

sitting on? An IKEA table that is also

an air purifier. And credit to David

Wall. The thing's so damn efficient.

Pull out these clips that lets you take

the top off. Then you can see your

filter in case you want to change it. A

hidden compartment where the power

supply hides. Love that. And then the

cable wires through the back of the leg.

David, can you organize my life, please?

Oh, and then my favorite. It's a giraffe

lamp. You push the head to turn it on.

Gosh. And then it'll turn itself off

after 15 minutes. Just enough time for a

quick Pokémon Champions. Then you can

even take the light off and use it to

make sure you can see your way to the

bathroom at night. Now, there are some

things I can see which partly explain

the low prices, like the fact that IKEA

seems to refuse to give you batteries

unless they absolutely have to. This

giraffe takes doubleas's. All of these

sensors take AAA's. And I guess that

kind of helps IKEA because then they can

sell you theirs. And then the charger

for those batteries, too. But I think

the biggest thing is IKEA's volumes. I

actually just cannot wrap my head around

the fact that this company has sold over

140 million of this one bookshelf. So

IKEA can place enormous orders for parts

and get a very good deal doing so. And

it actually feels like they specifically

reuse those parts in as many different

products as possible to maximize those

savings. And even more importantly,

unlike most companies who make home

accessories, who probably sell a few

thousand units and want to make big

bucks with each one, IKEA does not care.

As long as they're making pennies per

product, they're still doing fine

overall. That's why for years now IKEA

has been able to sell things at silly

low prices when they want to things like

these simple sensors. And I guess now

they're seeing it as their chance to

start applying that to the smart home

now specifically because matter is kind

of like the stars aligning for IKEA. You

might know that for the last decade, the

smart home was basically owned by

premium companies like Philips Huegh,

Sonos, Google Nest. Because to actually

make a smart home that worked needed a

ton of initial R&D to create a system

and a set of hardware where each thing

can talk to each other, you had to be

primarily a tech company. So, up until

this point, there's been no such thing

as the mass market middle ground, where

someone goes in to buy a sofa or a

cabinet, but then casually adds a smart

bulb to their basket just because it's

right there at the till. It's been too

complicated and priced way too high. But

matter is designed to fix that. In

theory, it takes away all of that

expensive R&D that used to cost

billions. All of that will my bulb

actually talk to my speaker engineering,

that's now baked into the standard

itself. So you don't need to be a tech

company anymore. You just need to make

yourself matter compatible. And no one

wins more from this than the company

with hundreds of millions of people

specifically walking through their doors

while in the process of setting up a

home. One area where it definitely does

pay to go high-end though is the eight

sleep bed I'll sponsor

which I've been using for over a year at

this point instead of the bed that I

spent 10 times more money on because I

tested them and to my shock/ despair

this made me sleep better and it's not

even close anymore cuz you know how

every single sleep device measures your

sleep score with a number right well

eight have just upgraded their app with

a sleep agent powered by AI that can

also tell you why you slept the way you

did and then fix it Like the last two

weeks, I've been kneede working on an

investigation video, and I've been

stressed. But this app is not just

noticing that and giving me suggestions

for how to fix it by itself, but it's

also taking matters into its own hands

and making 30 different adjustments

while I sleep. And with my code boss,

you can get $350 off the latest Pod 5.

You have 30 days to try it, but I don't

think you'll be sending it back.

It's falling apart, guys. I know I did

the whole spiel about why all this

matter stuff should be incredible, but

it's been 4 days of living with our IKEA

tech and it is not going well. Like this

doughnut lamp, which by the way on its

own is already kind of disappointing cuz

it's the exact same tech as that £7

smart bulb. Same app, same features, but

just now because it's in a mouth blown

glass container, it's £55. It doesn't

even have zone lighting or the ability

to do gradients. But more importantly,

how is the connection process this

terrible? We've been going through loop

after loop of discovery trying to find

the thing. And after seven failed

attempts, it randomly works on the

eighth, even though we've changed

nothing. Some of the bulbs have the same

thing. Like, we put six of them in this

column light over here. Bought them all

the same day. Five worked perfectly. One

just would not connect. It tries to find

it for two full minutes and then just

says unable to add accessory. I've

noticed sometimes the QR code on the box

lets you add these products onto your

network. Other times it does not. And

then the only thing that seems to work

when that happens is resetting the hub

and then manually entering the unique

device numbers that you can find on the

products. And while I've been dealing

with that, some of the lights that

originally set up fine have now started

showing that they're offline when

they're clearly on. My precious matter

remote has gone super laggy sometimes.

That should have turned it off. Didn't

like here. What's the matter?

>> Do you want to press it 100 times and

see what the success rate is?

>> Oh my god. I don't want to. One.

This is content.

No.

No. Yes.

How much longer do we have of this?

46 successes.

Oh dear. Still, you know, you see that

and then you think maybe it's just me.

Then I looked online. Reddit is full of

I bought IKEA's Matter products. Nothing

will connect. There's some positive

reviews on the IKEA site, but then

nearly as many one stars with pretty

much each person talking through

everything they've done to try and get

this stuff to work and then how it still

doesn't. I even found someone who's

tried to pair 59 of these matter remotes

and they've only managed to successfully

pair 29. They've got this 11step

troubleshooting technique they followed

and according to them, it fixed nothing.

So, they're estimating a 50% defect

rate, which kind of horrifyingly lines

up with the near 50% negative reviews on

their site

and the 50% success rate of the remote.

I mean, regardless of which way you look

at it, it's completely unheard of. What

if your car only started 50% of the

time? The more I look into this, the

more it feels like ultimately matter is

just not ready. It could be, and it

should be the solution. And one day it

still might be. But it seems like the

main companies who built matter, Apple,

Google, Amazon, etc., they invested in

it because it would help to promote the

idea that anyone could have a smart

home. But individually, none of them

actually has an incentive for it to

succeed. If matter becomes a viable

mainstream smart home solution, then

who's going to pay three times the price

for a Google Nest branded doorbell? How

will Amazon make sure that you also

subscribe to Prime and do all of your

shopping on Amazon.com? Matter will

basically open up the gates for

companies like IKEA to whip up something

for a Fiverr that works just as well and

that's not going to lock you into any

company's ecosystem. You'll notice as

well if you pay close attention that

Samsung has actually been really great

with all this matter stuff. Their Smart

Things is usually among the first

platforms to support each new Mattera

version, often within a few months of

release. But Apple, Google, Amazon,

sometimes we're talking a year behind

for the same updates. And that's

probably not random. Samsung is the most

aggressive because Samsung has the least

to protect. They don't have the dominant

voice assistant or the dominant phone

ecosystem. So, an open standard like

Matter has a lot of upsides for them.

They make tons of stuff like fridges,

washers, and ovens. All matter is going

to do is help those products work better

in other companies systems. It's really

those companies, the ones who make those

systems like Amazon, who have the most

to lose and so are the most reluctantly

trudging towards actually making matter

good. and instead focusing their efforts

on trying to ensure that the best

experience with their products comes

when you use all of them and you do so

via their app. And it feels like all of

this politics has left IKEA a little bit

stuck. They clearly saw the potential of

matter. They dived head first into it,

but it's just not ready yet. And while

IKEA are not the only ones supporting

matter, the difference is that IKEA's

products depend on matter because they

don't have their own robust ecosystem to

fall back on. So, for the sake of making

this smartarthome dream accessible to

the masses, I really hope IKEA can get

over this incredibly bumpy start. But

I'm not holding my breath.