Sonos Symfonisk bookshelf speaker
The Sonos and Ikea partnership produced great-sounding bookshelf, picture frame, and lamp speakers with AirPlay 2 support, but that partnership has come to an end.
Sonos has been pulling back significantly since a 2024 app update caused mayhem for users. The system wouldn’t recognize speakers, fail to play music, or a number of other bugs that occurred due to a full app rebuild.
In the time since, Sonos has been scaling back to refocus on what it did best — home audio. According to a report from The Verge, it seems part of that scaling back includes ending the partnership with Ikea.
“Over the past eight years, we’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Ikea and are proud of what we’ve achieved,” Sonos spokesperson Erin Pategas said in the report. “Although our work together has largely wound down and we won’t be releasing new products as partners, we’ll continue to support every existing Symfonisk product so customers can keep enjoying great sound in their homes for many years to come.”
The $119 bookshelf speaker, $259 picture frame, and $249 speaker lamp are all relatively low-priced and sound amazing thanks to that Sonos flair. They proved to be excellent choices for customers because they could expand their Sonos and AirPlay 2 speaker setup without too much cost.
The speakers themselves blended in well, whether as a bulbous lamp or an interesting geographic picture. Sonos even let users set them up as rear channels in a 5.1 home theater setup.
As Sonos pulls back, it likely can’t afford to have competitive, lower-priced speakers eating into its profit margins. Customers were burned by the poor app update, which even led to the CEO leaving, so bringing everything back in-house to focus on stability is likely essential.
The Ikea website shows that the Symfonisk products are still available to purchase while supplies last. They’re likely a safe purchase since even if Sonos ends support for them, they’ll function as AirPlay 2 speakers.
The promise of support for software updates is also a boon, though there’s no guarantee on how long those will last. But if you’ve hesitated to buy these excellent speakers before or want to complete a stereo pair, there’s not much time left to do so.
