Ikea's highly anticipated Matter-over-Thread smart home lineup is facing a rough debut. The Swedish furniture giant's budget-friendly devices - including smart bulbs, sensors, and programmable buttons starting at just $6 - are struggling to connect to major platforms like Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. User forums are flooding with complaints, and testing reveals success rates as low as 52 percent for some products, raising questions about whether Matter's promise of seamless interoperability is ready for mass market deployment.
The smart home's biggest affordability breakthrough is turning into its latest connectivity nightmare. Ikea's newly launched Matter-over-Thread devices - which should work seamlessly across any major platform - are instead leaving users locked out of their own smart homes.
After two weeks of testing, reporters at The Verge managed to connect just two of six Ikea devices. One Kajplats smart bulb finally paired with Apple Home after seven attempts. An Alpstuga air quality monitor eventually joined Home Assistant, but only after failing repeatedly with Apple's platform. A Bilresa smart button briefly connected to Amazon Alexa before disappearing from the network entirely.
The Timmerflotte temperature sensor and Myggspray motion sensor refused to connect to anything - including Ikea's own Dirigera hub.
It's not an isolated problem. The Tradfri subreddit has become a support forum filled with frustrated customers sharing similar experiences. Product reviews on echo the complaints. One particularly telling documented attempting to pair 60 Bilresa buttons - only 31 connected successfully.
