IKEA’s new smart home range is here – but do you need a hub to make it work?

The internet almost broke yesterday after IKEA decided to casually drop 21 new smart home gadgets at 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. I’d be surprised if you haven’t seen the news already, but if you haven’t, you can check out my favourite picks from the launch here.

The biggest talking point, though, is that every single one of these new gadgets is Matter-enabled, which is pretty huge considering how affordable they are. That said, not everyone’s fully clued up on what Matter actually is, so it’s sparked a few key questions.

As someone who’s been reviewing Matter-enabled products for a while now, I thought I’d tackle the biggest question I’ve seen pop up since the launch – “Do I need a smart home hub to use these new IKEA devices?”

So, here’s the short answer – yes, you do. All Matter-enabled products need a smart home hub to work. IKEA hasn’t confirmed that these new devices will also run over Bluetooth like its older ones did, so it’s safe to assume they won’t.

However, the good news is that because they use Matter, you can connect them through any compatible hub, not just IKEA’s. That means you can use hubs from Google, Amazon, Apple or IKEA’s own DIRIGERA, which was recently updated to support Matter.

The DIRIGERA hub can also act as a bridge for IKEA’s older smart devices, letting you control everything from one system, so don't worry if you still own some gadgets from before.

So, in short: yes, you’ll need a hub, but no, it doesn’t have to be from IKEA. That’s the beauty of Matter.

Got more questions? Drop them below and I’ll do my best to answer!