Everyone at CES 2026 fell for the same donut. IKEA’s Varmblixt smart lamp, a curvy, orange-glass ring that glows from within, became one of the most talked-about products at the show, and it sold out fast when it finally launched in the US this spring. What most of the coverage buries in paragraph nine is the $109 catch.
What You Actually Get for $99.99
The smart Varmblixt itself is $99.99, works as either a table or wall lamp, and ships with a pre-paired remote for basic dimming and color control right out of the box. The glass is genuinely distinctive, curvy and tactile in a way most smart lamps are not, with an LED rated for roughly 25,000 hours of use.
The Part Most Coverage Skips
The remote gets you basic on, off, dim, and preset colors. To actually use the IKEA Home Smart app, unlock the wider range of colors, set schedules, or integrate it with Google, Apple, or Amazon smart home systems via its Matter-over-Thread support, you need IKEA’s Dirigera hub, sold separately for $109. That is more than the cost of the lamp itself, and it is easy to miss if you are buying based on a viral video rather than reading the fine print.
If you already own a Dirigera hub for other IKEA smart devices, this is a non-issue, the lamp slots right in. If this would be your first IKEA smart home purchase, budget for $209 total, not $99.99, before deciding whether it is worth it.
What Reviewers Actually Liked, and Did Not
TechRadar’s hands-on testing praised the design and the warm, candy-colored light output, while specifically noting the app experience was less polished than competitors like Philips Hue, which offers far more granular control per device. That tracks with the pattern across owner reviews of the original non-smart Varmblixt too: people consistently love the shape and the glow, and consistently complain when a feature they expected, dimming, a remote, is missing from whichever version they bought. The lesson is the same one that applies to most IKEA smart products: check exactly which version and bundle you are ordering before checkout.
Is It Worth It?
As ambient mood lighting with basic remote control, yes, at $99.99 it is a genuinely distinctive piece most color-changing lamps do not match on design. As a fully-featured smart home device with app control and automation, only if you are willing to spend $209 total or already own the hub. Compare that to a Govee Table Lamp 2 at $69.99, which includes app control and music sync without requiring a separate hub purchase, if smart features matter more to you than the specific look of the Varmblixt.
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Last Updated: August 2026