Vinyl is hot: Ikea comes with record player
Vinyl is and remains hot! That is why Ikea is presenting the Obegränsad record player at Milan Design Week, in collaboration with Swedish House Mafia.
At the Milan Design Week it’s beautiful fabrics, beautiful design furniture, but also Ikea! In addition to smart furniture, the Swedish furniture store also offers more and more smart electronic items. For example, the store has been working with Sonos for a long time and a super smart speaker lamp is already for sale, for example.
Music collection
At the Milan Design Week, Ikea presents the Obegränsad collection. In it a desk with speaker stands and an armchair to sit at that desk. Also a record player. And that wasn’t even the intention.
When Ikea talked to the Swedish House Mafia about the new collection to be designed, it was actually decided beforehand not to delve too much into electronics. This poses challenges that are not necessarily Ikea’s core business. But then again, when the music boys started talking about it, the product designers forgot about it.
Dutch touch
The Dutch designer Friso Wiersma works for Ikea and was immediately enthusiastic. The designer who graduated cum laude from the design academy in Eindhoven was immediately triggered by the simplicity of the idea. It had to be a physical statement. Not a slim and slender record player, but a device that can be seen. As he himself says:
The square and the circle together, the coarseness of the whole piece – it gives exactly the statement we wanted for the record player.
And that ties in well with the approach of the Swedish House Mafia. The design was clear, but then again, the technology is a challenge. Because affordability is also a condition.
The technique
Enough talk about the design. How about that technique. A solid solid construction and a built-in preamplifier. Power from a simple USB cable is enough to run the whole thing. The needle is “from a well-known brand” as Ikea itself indicates and is in a kind of replaceable cartridge. So no fiddling with needle transplants, just put in a new unit, just like ink in your printer.
According to the store, the record player works together with the Eneby Bluetooth speaker, but we also see an old-fashioned tulip connection on the pictures. We suspect that it can also simply be connected to your home cinema set.
Autumn 2022
Further technical details are still missing, just like what this gem may cost. In the fall of this year, the Obegränsad collection will be launched worldwide and will contain a total of 20 products. It is unknown whether this will include more electronics.
