Ikea announces record player that might actually make it to stores this time

Designed in collaboration with Swedish House Mafia.

Ikea, which has never been scared to dive into new product categories, has announced plans to release a record player as part of its new Obegränsad collection this fall. The record player was designed in collaboration with house music supergroup Swedish House Mafia, and has a chunky design in line with a lot of the other consumer electronics Ikea has produced. Alongside it, the Swedish retailer has also announced an armchair and desk as part of the collection.

This technically isn’t the first record playing device that Ikea has announced. Way back in 2018 it announced a turntable made in collaboration with Teenage Engineering that it hoped to release the following year. But according to a Teenage Engineering support page, the player never made it into the final collection.

Its design and controls are designed to be simple. Image: Ikea

Ikea engineer Carmen Stoicescu alludes to this previous attempt in an interview about the new record player on Ikea’s site. “When the question came to me, I just said, ‘We actually tried to do a record player before, so we could use the same supplier maybe?’” she says. The writeup contains a couple of hints about the player’s functionality, like the fact that it has a built-in preamp, is powered over USB and features a replaceable cartridge and needle. In a press release Ikea also notes that the player will work with its Eneby Bluetooth speaker, but because it doesn’t actually support Bluetooth it’ll only work over a wired connection. Otherwise, technical details are slim. It’s not clear whether the record player has built-in speakers or whether it’s limited to wired output.

We’ve put these questions to Ikea along with questions about how much the device is expected to cost. It’ll be available this fall along with over 20 other products that make up the Obegränsad collection.

Jon Porter