IKEA is preparing to launch a new smart plug that lets you track the energy consumption of your appliances – and its recent appearance in IKEA's Home app suggests it isn't far away from landing on shelves.
The Swedish homeware giant announced its new Inspelning plug back in May, and now the German blog Smarthome Asisstent (via Notebookcheck) has spotted that the plug is now in the latest version of IKEA's app for both Android and iOS, which rolled out last week.
That seems a little premature, considering that IKEA stated back in May that the Inspelning would go on sale globally in October. We have seen previous IKEA products go on sale earlier than planned, though. IKEA's colorful USB-C cables landed in stores before they were made available online.
We've asked IKEA for an update on the Inspelning's launch date and will update this story when we hear back. But it's clearly en route, and that's good news for anyone who wants a smart plug that lets you remotely control appliances via the IKEA app or voice assistants like Alexa, alongside the option of tracking power consumption.
IKEA currently sells a simpler smart plug called the Tretakt ($16 / £10, with a remote control). This plug lets you turn appliances on or off remotely and schedule your lighting if you pair it with the Dirigera smart home hub ($69 / £60).
Considering the Inspelning promises to add the option of measuring energy consumption of any device plugged into it, we expect the price to be slightly higher than the Tretakt. But given it's an IKEA product, it'll still be on the affordable side of the pricing spectrum.
How will it work?
IKEA has been testing a new feature in its Home app in Sweden called Energy Insights, which the Inspelning smart plug will, well, plug into.
The feature promises to serve up real-time data on energy consumption and electricity prices, letting you compare your home's power usage to similar households. The idea is that you can see which appliances are the most energy-hungry and use them more efficiently to save money and reduce your consumption.
The ability to schedule and automate things like lighting also fits neatly into this plan and could make the Inspelning plug a tempting buy, particularly if you have a lot of appliances that lack built-in smarts.
On the downside, IKEA's Dirigera hub isn't quite in the same impulse buy territory as a smart plug and doesn't fully support the Matter smart home standard. Currently, Matter support is only available as a beta feature in the experimental 'Workshop' section of the IKEA Home app and only supports lighting products.
However, IKEA promises that "more product types will be added later" to this Matter support and that "over time," its whole smart home range will support Matter via the Dirigera hub, which will "serve as a Matter bridge."
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