is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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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.
“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.” — David Granath, Ikea
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.
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