Ikea’s long-awaited Fyrtur and Kadrilj smart blinds are finally coming, releasing in the US on October 1, six months after their originally planned April 1 release date.
Despite the delay, however, Ikea’s new smart blinds will maintain one of their most unique selling points: they are significantly cheaper than nearly anything else on the market, delivering affordable smart blinds for the first time for a lot of smart home enthusiasts.
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There are two different blinds planned for release in the US. The cheaper Kadrilj blind will let in a little light, but is priced at €99 or local equivalent, while there’s a blackout Frytur blind that will cost €119. It’s unclear which of these, if any, will be offered for sale in other territories, but they are incredibly cheap for smart blinds.
The blinds have a battery powered motor that can raise and lower the shades, which work wirelessly, so you can control them using a bundled remote, your phone via Ikea’s own Trådfri smartphone app. You can also set timers for the blinds in the app or even voice control using an Android or iOS voice assistant.
The below video gives a good overview of how they work, and honestly it’s quite compelling, even if you didn’t know that hands-free blinds were something that you wanted.
No news on when these will get across to the UK, but providing they hit their proposed release date this time and hit their US launch in October, hopefully we’ll see it arriving on England’s not-so-sunny shores sometime soon.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
