Sonos and Ikea made a floor lamp speaker that could be perfect for surround sound

The new Symfonisk floor lamp speaker will be available in January. | Image: Ikea

Sonos and Ikea today announced the latest addition to their collaborative Symfonisk product lineup: it’s a new floor-standing lamp speaker. The $260 Symfonisk floor lamp speaker will be available from Ikea’s stores and website beginning in January.

In terms of design, just picture the second-gen Symfonisk lamp speaker with long legs jutting out of the bottom and extending down to a circular base. There’s really not much to it. If you found the last lamp’s style to be tasteful, you’ll like this one. If you thought it was ugly as sin, the floor lamp version probably won’t change your mind. Right now, the standard Symfonisk lamp is selling for $179.99, so the floor lamp option comes at a premium.

“Many people want to have several light sources on different levels and parts of the room to create the right mood. The challenge of not having enough room for a table to put the lamp on led us to create the floor lamp,” Ikea’s Stjepan Begic said in a press release.

Image: Ikea
The legs put the speaker at a good height to be used for surround sound, but you’ll need two lamps for that.

The Symfonisk bookshelf, lamp, and wall art speakers can each be doubled up and used as rear surround speakers for any of Sonos’ soundbars. As the picture above illustrates, this could wind up being a primary use case for the floor lamp: the legs position the speakers at a good height for surround purposes, and you don’t have to provide your own stands. That said, you’ll be paying more than what something like the One SL speaker — a popular option for Sonos satellites — would cost.

The new speaker comes with a bamboo lampshade, but you can purchase replacement designs that use different textures and materials. I feel like this thing really could’ve used a shelf halfway down the legs; that’s a lot of empty space. But it is what it is.

Image: Ikea
The floor lamp speaker comes with a bamboo lampshade.

The press release announcing the new floor lamp speaker notes that “Ikea and Sonos will continue to challenge each other to find new solutions to enhance life at home through good sound integrated into home furnishing products.”

Sonos has a busy 2023 ahead; the company has said it will enter a new product category sometime next year, and The Verge has also revealed that Sonos plans to release a high-end desk speaker, codenamed Optimo 2, in 2023.