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Ikea’s smart donut lamp is a sweet treat
Tech Close Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Tech Reviews Close Reviews Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Reviews Smart Home Close Smart Home Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Smart Home Ikea’s smart donut lamp is a sweet treat The new Varmblixt adds color-changing, dimming, and Matter-over-Thread support, and brings a touch of inexpensive style to my smart home. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Close Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Senior Reviewer, Smart Home Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Apr 15, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC Link Share Gift If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. The Varmblixt is a smart donut-shaped light fixture that can sit on a table or be mounted on a wall. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Part Of All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about see all updates Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Close Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter , Wired , Dwell , BBC , and US News . Ikea’s popular Varmblixt lamp just got a smart home glow-up . The delightfully bulbous light now features color-changing, dimming, and smart home control. I tested the new smart lamp in my daughter’s room and found it made a great bedside lamp and added a fun touch of ambiance to her space. While she’s rarely a fan of me adding smart tech to her room, she did give this an “It’s nice” accolade — high praise from my 15-year-old. Related This $10 Ikea speaker lets you connect 100 at once Ikea’s new low-cost line is a huge win for Matter and your smart home Ikea tried to build a smart home for everyone — here’s why it’s not working yet The donut lamp, as it’s known for its distinctive shape resembling everyone’s favorite sweet treat, can be wall-mounted or set flat on a table. It comes with a long power cable, which helps with placement, and differs from its non-smart counterpart in that it has a matte finish rather than the original’s glossy glow. The matte does look quite stylish and helps accentuate the new colors — the old version only glows orange. 8 Verge Score Varmblixt lamp $ 100 $ 100 The Good Rich colors Replaceable bulb Remote is included Works with Ikea and Apple Home’s adaptive lighting The Bad Looks a bit weird when off Remote control connectivity is sometimes spotty Need an Ikea or Matter hub for more colors and features $100 at Ikea How we rate and review products At $100, Varmblixt is a bit of a luxury gadget, but if you’ve ever shopped around for accent lighting, you’ll know that’s a good price. The lamp isn’t super bright, giving off 180 lumens, so it isn’t really for task lighting (my daughter isn’t a read-in-bed-type gal), but it gives off enough of a glow on the bright white setting to cast a perfectly usable light in her small room. An on-device button makes it easy to shut off the light, and the included pre-paired Bilresa remote has two buttons that can control the light, turning it on or off, dimming, and cycling through 12 preset colors. These include shades of white, blue, green, pink, orange, and yellow “curated” by the lamp’s designer, artist Sabine Marcelis. The Varmblixt replaced a regular table lamp on my daughter’s bedside table — and by mounting it on the wall, I freed up a lot of space. The lamp’s bulb is rated to last 25,000 hours, but the good news is that it’s user-replaceable. Plus, the remote uses AAA batteries, which are cheaper and easier to replace than the coin-cell batteries found in most remotes. If you add the lamp to Ikea’s Home Smart app using its Dirigera hub ($109) or a Matter-compatible ecosystem — such as Apple Home, Google Home, or Amazon Alexa — you unlock hundreds more colors and the ability to schedule the light, set sleep/wake scenes, and pair it with a motion sensor and other lights in your room. With the Dirigera hub, you can also enable Ikea’s adaptive lighting feature that adjusts the white hue gradually throughout the day to mimic daylight. The lamp also works with Apple Home’s Adaptive Lighting. Overall, it’s a simple smart lamp, with fun features out of the box and the ability to unlock more functionality. My only real issue with it is that the Varmblixt looks fairly drab when turned off. The lamp comes preprogrammed with 12 shades. The purple is my favorite, as it fits in nicely with the room’s col
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- Follow Follow See All Smart Home Ikea’s smart donut lamp is a sweet treat The new Varmblixt adds color-changing, dimming, and Matter-over-Thread support, and brings a touch of inexpensive style to my smart home.
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