Ikea symfonisk table lamp speaker 2 review: A bright light with even brighter sound

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Of all the biggest home audio trends to come out of 2021, nothing quite beats the obsession companies currently have with chameleon-like speakers disguised as household furniture. Brands from Bang & Olufsen to Sony to LG have brought out speakers that look like books or double up as stylish lanterns or kerosene lamps.

But none can compare to the gung-ho attitude than that of the partnership between Ikea and home audio company Sonos, who teamed up four years ago to design home furnishings with, you guessed it, speakers in them.

In 2019, Ikea launched its first products in the Symfonisk range – a bookshelf speaker (£99, Ikea.com) and the first-gen table lamp speaker, followed by a picture frame speaker (£199, Ikea.com) in 2021. Now, after releasing a second generation version of the table lamp speaker in the US last October, the improved, mushroom-shaped lamp has now arrived in the UK.

Unlike a simple Bluetooth speaker or a basic bedside lamp, as a two-in-one device, the Ikea symfonisk lamp is both of these things put together, so we’ve tested it based on multiple factors. Obviously, we’ve had to consider its design, the build quality, how good it looks in our home and how well it lit rooms up.

But we’re also going to be listening to music on this lamp, so we’ve also tested how well it works as a speaker in its own right. How pleasant was it to use while listening to music? And did it deliver room-filling audio as well as it did light? We also looked at the table lamp’s controls and any stand-out features, beyond its ability to play music and light up our lounge, of course.

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The design of the Ikea symfonisk table lamp has always been something that has stirred up strong reactions from anyone who laid their eyes on it, and not in the most positive way. The first generation model looked less like a lamp and more, well, phallic. It had a strange narrow neck, a rotund belly and an oddly-shaped bulging head – not the most attractive piece of furniture in the world, that’s for sure, especially because it’s supposed to look like a lamp and blend in with your home decor.

But while the 2nd gen model still has that mushroom-shaped design, the lamp looks a lot less salacious. The base is now significantly shorter, but also broader, and it comes with a wider selection of shades that are all less protruding than its frosted forebear. It just looks a little more proportionate in size. The shades can either be bought separately or with the base included. There’s a hurricane-style glass shade, which comes in black or white (£40, Ikea.com) or a cheaper fabric shade, also in black or white (£20, Ikea.com).

Read more: 6 best Sad lamps to banish the winter blues

The controls now sit on the rear of the lamp instead of on a plinth, making it more speaker than lamp. They’re harder to reach than the first-gen, especially if you’ve got the lamp backed up against a wall, but it’s a minor irritant for a better-looking product. Ikea has also done away with the dial (which looked like a dimmer) in favour of a simple on and off button that sits flush on the front of the fabricated base, used to turn on the light.

In terms of lighting, the lamp now works with E26/E27 LED bulbs – including Ikea’s smart bulbs and Philips Hue bulbs – an upgrade that many people will appreciate, seeing as they’re more ubiquitous than the E12 bulbs used on the previous generation lamp.

It’s as simple to set up as any other Sonos wifi speaker. Just pull up the app, pair it and off you go. If you’ve already got a Sonos multi-room setup, it’s easy to bring the lamp into the fold, allowing you to play music from all of your Sonos speakers at the same time. Plus, there’s support for Sonos’s TruePlay tech, which we always recommend people set up. It essentially moulds the audio around the obstacles in your room so that it can deliver fuller sound.

One neat trick is that, with multi-room, you can essentially build a more traditional surround sound setup. Say you had two lamps either side of the sofa and a Sonos beam gen 2 soundbar in the middle, all of a sudden, you’ve got audio coming from the sides as well as from the front of you. We were only sent one lamp to review, so we couldn’t test this out, however.

Read more: 8 best surround sound systems to amp up your movie nights

One frustrating thing is that there aren’t any built-in microphones, so you can’t skip or pause tracks with your voice. You have to physically click on the buttons on the rear or switch songs using your phone. That’s the same for all products in the symfonisk range – yes, even the picture frame. It does feel like a slight oversight considering these are smarthome products and most people want the convenience of activating smarthome with their voice.

We had our doubts about the lamp’s aptitude for anywhere near good audio when we first plugged it in and switched it on. A lamp couldn’t deliver good sound, surely. But in Sonos we trust – this sounds pretty darn good.

According to Ikea and Sonos, there’s a “completely new acoustic architecture that uses a custom waveguide,” which helps to spread the sound out across the room more evenly, instead of beaming out in one single direction like the first generation model. The pair don’t go into the nitty gritty, but the speaker was pretty good at swimming into all four corners.

There is a downside to that though, because without the audio beaming directly at you in one single direction, sound feels a touch more washed out and muddy, with the higher frequencies taking the biggest hit. It’s also fairly bass-heavy and less balanced than other Sonos speakers, but that’s only noticeable when tunes dip into the upper range. It’s not grating in the slightest, just a little murky when it comes to high pitch synth tracks like Glass Animal’s Youth.

This doesn’t mean it’s a bad speaker in any way, however, there’s a surprising amount of kick when you consider the speaker’s diminutive size. Put on Massive Attack’s Angel, which has oodles of sub-bass and you’ll feel it in your chest, plus this thing gets loud, like, really loud. While it struggles with some of the more intricate elements, this is an extremely enjoyable speaker to listen to music on, especially because it can really fill a room with some seriously boomy sound.

With hybrid devices, it’s easy to get completely caught up with creating a cool and innovative new product that you end up messing up the basics, succeeding at making both a lousy-looking lamp and a terrible speaker. That’s kind of what happened with the first generation speaker lamp.

While the first-generation model might have been a bit hit and miss in the looks department, the second generation symfonisk speaker lamp seems to get the balance just right. It’s overall a more subtle, more handsome-looking table lamp than the previous version, with less obtrusive controls and support for more accessible E27 bulbs. It also spreads sound out evenly, delivering some delectable punch to your tracks that will help get you up in the morning (after turning on the light).

It remains a very niche, very specific product for a particular use, essentially helping people with little nightstand space. You can find better looking lamps out there and you can find better-sounding Sonos speakers, but if you want both, the Symfonisk table lamp does an admirable job.