We Linked 150 of Ikea’s $10 Speakers to Make a Wall of Sound
An Ikea speaker claimed to support linking up to 150 units had never been tested at that scale, so a London team built a wall of them to find out. The test showed that the Kallsup speakers could be chained from a smartphone in large numbers, demonstrating an unusual multi-speaker feature in a product aimed at individual households.
One speaker arrived damaged, but the remaining 149 linked successfully in about 30 minutes. Each costs $10 and has a 1.8-inch driver and a 3-watt amplifier, giving the array a combined rated output of 447 watts. The sound became very loud, though the reviewer described it as alarm-like rather than hi-fi quality.
In short
- Ikea’s $10 Kallsup speakers linked up to 149 units.
- The setup took about 30 minutes.
- It got very loud, but lacked hi-fi sound.
Explained simply
Ikea’s Kallsup is a small, low-cost Bluetooth speaker designed for everyday home use. Its unusual feature is that multiple units can connect to one another and play audio from a phone, with Ikea saying as many as 150 can be linked.
That makes the speaker notable as a way to spread sound across a large space using devices sold for individual households. The test described in the story explores how the feature works at scale; the speakers’ combined rated power does not by itself indicate how clear or high-quality the sound will be.