Ikea’s smart donut lamp is a sweet treat

Ikea’s popular Varmblixt lamp just got a smart home glow-up. The delightfully bulbous light now features color-changing, dimming, and smart home control. I tested the new smart lamp in my daughter’s room and found it made a great bedside lamp and added a fun touch of ambiance to her space. While she’s rarely a fan of me adding smart tech to her room, she did give this an “It’s nice” accolade — high praise from my 15-year-old.

The donut lamp, as it’s known for its distinctive shape resembling everyone’s favorite sweet treat, can be wall-mounted or set flat on a table. It comes with a long power cable, which helps with placement, and differs from its non-smart counterpart in that it has a matte finish rather than the original’s glossy glow. The matte does look quite stylish and helps accentuate the new colors — the old version only glows orange.

At $100, Varmblixt is a bit of a luxury gadget, but if you’ve ever shopped around for accent lighting, you’ll know that’s a good price. The lamp isn’t super bright, giving off 180 lumens, so it isn’t really for task lighting (my daughter isn’t a read-in-bed-type gal), but it gives off enough of a glow on the bright white setting to cast a perfectly usable light in her small room.

An on-device button makes it easy to shut off the light, and the included pre-paired Bilresa remote has two buttons that can control the light, turning it on or off, dimming, and cycling through 12 preset colors. These include shades of white, blue, green, pink, orange, and yellow “curated” by the lamp’s designer, artist Sabine Marcelis.

The lamp’s bulb is rated to last 25,000 hours, but the good news is that it’s user-replaceable. Plus, the remote uses AAA batteries, which are cheaper and easier to replace than the coin-cell batteries found in most remotes.

If you add the lamp to Ikea’s Home Smart app using its Dirigera hub ($109) or a Matter-compatible ecosystem — such as Apple Home, Google Home, or Amazon Alexa — you unlock hundreds more colors and the ability to schedule the light, set sleep/wake scenes, and pair it with a motion sensor and other lights in your room. With the Dirigera hub, you can also enable Ikea’s adaptive lighting feature that adjusts the white hue gradually throughout the day to mimic daylight. The lamp also works with Apple Home’s Adaptive Lighting.

Overall, it’s a simple smart lamp, with fun features out of the box and the ability to unlock more functionality. My only real issue with it is that the Varmblixt looks fairly drab when turned off.

The Varmblixt is part of Ikea’s new line of super-affordable smart home devices starting at around $5. They all use Matter-over-Thread for connectivity, rather than the Zigbee protocol that its previous Tradfri line relied on. I’ve tested several of the new devices, which include Kajplats smart bulbs, the Myggspray motion sensor, the Grillplats smart plug, Bilresa smart buttons, the Timmerflotte temperature sensor, and the Alpstuga indoor air quality monitor.

All the Matter gadgets can be paired with Ikea’s Dirigera hub or with any Matter-supported platform — including Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. The benefit of Matter here is that if you already own a Thread-enabled Matter controller — such as an Apple HomePod, Amazon Echo Show, or Google TV Streamer — you don’t need to buy an extra hub to get the additional functions.

However, since Ikea launched the new line earlier this year, I (and others) have run into connectivity problems with the new gadgets, both with Matter platforms and with the Dirigera hub. Ikea acknowledged the problems and has released a number of updates to its hub over the last few months. These appear to have resolved some of the issues, and I was able to onboard the lamp and remote to the Dirigera on the first try. Additionally, following a week of testing, the connectivity of the lamp and the remote has been mostly solid.

I did run into difficulties getting the lamp into Apple Home through Matter. But after the fourth try (and leaving it to sit for a week while I was on vacation), it finally connected. However, sharing the device from Apple Home to Home Smart using Matter’s Multi-Admin feature didn’t work. I eventually got the lamp working on both platforms by first pairing it with Dirigera, then using a Matter code generated in the Home Smart app to connect to Apple Home.

The good news is that, unlike the other new products in Ikea’s smart home line, the Varmblixt doesn’t require smart home connectivity. It works with its included remote out of the box without a hub.

Setting up the lamp was overall straightforward. While my remote wasn’t pre-paired, Ikea’s signature bare-bones instructions were clear enough to get the lamp and remote connected with a few button presses — much simpler than Ikea’s complicated Tradfri pairing process. Once paired, it responded promptly to a single button press to turn it on or off, a double press to change color, and a long press to dim. Although after I paired it with Ikea’s Dirigera hub, I did experience occasional lag.

To connect it to Dirigera, I had to reset both the lamp and the Bilresa remote by holding their programming buttons down for a few seconds, then scan their Matter QR code into the Home Smart app using my iPhone. Once connected, I put both devices in the same room in the app and was given the option to pair the remote to the lamp.

The app connection lets me use my phone to adjust the brightness, choose from a wide spectrum of colors and tunable whites, enable adaptive lighting, and set up scenes. The Home Smart app also offers pre-set Sleep / Wake scenes, which gradually dim and brighten the lamp over 30 minutes — ideal for the bedroom setup I was testing in.

With the remote connected to Home Smart, I could add more functions to the buttons by turning it into a scene controller. This lets me control any scenes I created in the app with the various button presses. I set up a lighting scene to conjure up the purple color I liked because it fits the room’s decor, along with other lighting scenes to suit how my daughter uses the room.

The remote can also control multiple lights, so if I kitted out my daughter’s room with Ikea or Matter-compatible lighting and smart plugs, the Bilresa could manage them all — impressive for a $6 gadget.

Another benefit of connecting the lamp to the Dirigera hub was that I could add Ikea’s new $9 Myggspray motion sensor to the room and have the lamp turn on when motion is detected.

This worked well, and the app offers basic settings to tweak when it detects motion. I remember when motion sensors and smart buttons cost upwards of $30. I’m super excited to see the smart home becoming more affordable.

I’ve tested a lot of smart lighting products, and this is one of my new favorites, thanks to its affordable price, fun design, broad functionality when connected to my smart home, plus its ability to fit nicely into my home decor. It brings together form and function in a stylish package.

There aren’t a lot of smart products that are designed to look good in your home, but this is definitely one of them. While smart lamps and light fixtures from companies like Govee and Nanoleaf, with their flashy RGB lighting effects, are fun for a certain time and space, the Varmblixt is more versatile.

Both Philips Hue and LIFX offer some good-looking light fixtures, but they’re more expensive than Ikea’s and don’t come with replaceable bulbs. With its home-furnishing heritage, focus on low prices, and the help of artist Marcelis, Ikea has made a genuinely delightful smart lamp that’s not only beautiful but also affordable and practical.

Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge