IKEA’s new GRILLPLATS and TOFSMYGGA smart plugs are arriving in stores — and at $8 and $15 respectively, they might be the most important smart home products of 2026. Not because they’re groundbreaking technology, but because IKEA just made Matter-over-Thread devices cheaper than a fast food meal.
What IKEA Is Launching
The two smart plugs are part of IKEA’s massive 21-product smart home refresh, the company’s biggest smart home launch ever. All products are built on the Matter standard over Thread, the universal protocol that lets smart devices work across Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Samsung SmartThings without vendor lock-in.
Here’s what you get:
- GRILLPLATS ($8) — indoor smart plug with built-in power metering. Turns any lamp or small appliance into a smart device. Can pair with IKEA’s remotes or motion sensors.
- TOFSMYGGA ($15) — outdoor-rated smart plug with IP44 weather protection. Same Matter/Thread connectivity, designed for garden lights, outdoor decorations, or patio equipment.
Both require a Matter-compatible hub to operate — IKEA’s own DIRIGERA hub works, but so does any other Matter controller from Apple, Google, or Amazon. That’s the whole point of Matter: buy whatever hub you want, it all works together.
The broader launch includes 11 KAJPLATS smart bulb variants (all under $10), a full suite of home security sensors (motion, door/window, water leak, air quality), and updated remote controls — all Matter-over-Thread.
Why It Matters
The smart home industry has a price problem. Matter-compatible devices from Eve, Nanoleaf, and Aqara typically start at $30-40 for a simple plug. At those prices, outfitting a whole house gets expensive fast — and most consumers can’t justify spending $40 to make a desk lamp “smart.”
IKEA at $8 changes that equation entirely. This is mass-market pricing from a mass-market brand with 900 million annual store visits. When someone walks into IKEA for a bookshelf and sees an $8 smart plug next to the checkout, the impulse-buy threshold vanishes.
The Thread protocol choice is significant too. Unlike Matter-over-WiFi (which most cheap smart plugs use), Thread creates a low-power mesh network where every device strengthens the network for other devices. More IKEA plugs in your house means better connectivity for all your Thread devices, regardless of brand. At $8 per node, building a robust Thread mesh becomes trivially cheap.
There’s also the outdoor angle. The TOFSMYGGA at $15 is one of the cheapest outdoor-rated Matter plugs available — period. Smart outdoor lighting has been an expensive niche; IKEA just democratized it.
“Our goal is still the same as when we started exploring the smart home in 2012: to make it easy to use, easy to understand, and within reach for the many,” said David Granath, Range Manager at IKEA of Sweden.
The Bottom Line
IKEA’s GRILLPLATS and TOFSMYGGA won’t win any design awards or tech reviews for innovation. But they might do something more important: make Matter-over-Thread the default smart home standard by sheer volume and price pressure. When the world’s biggest furniture retailer sells $8 smart plugs alongside BILLY bookcases, the smart home stops being an enthusiast hobby and becomes just… how homes work.
