Ikea launches a new party speaker range with Teenage Engineering

It's been a couple of years since Ikea announced it was going to collaborate audio experts Teenage Engineering on some household products, but the partnership is now bearing fruit at last. The two businesses have co-designed Ikea's new Frekvens range, including speakers and lights that are ideal for parties.

Frekvens, for the curious, is Swedish for "frequency", and seems aimed squarely at a partying crowd, ahead of its launch on February 1st. When it comes to speakers for use in the home, the collection's most expensive speaker is the star, at $150 but with a subwoofer packed in, and really industrial look that feels like an interesting counterpoint to Ikea's other collaboration, with Sonos.

The Symfonisk bookshelf speaker that they worked on together is the epitome of subtlety by comparison. 

However, the Symfonisk range can't offer portability, whereas Frevkens includes an 8-inch portable Bluetooth speaker (for $80) with a 10-hour battery life and a carrying handle for ease of use. It also comes in black, yellow or red, so seriously striking visuals are very much on the table. 

If you want something even smaller there's also a $20 option that comes with a belt clip so that your sound can surround you as you move, like a bubble. 

We'll wait to get our hands on the speakers to talk about their sound quality, but Teenage Engineering has pedigree in this area, so you'd hope for great sound to go with those reasonable prices. 

The full range of products also includes some non-sonic party accessories, though - in particular an LED spotlight and LED multi-use light, which can give your party the atmosphere you're hoping for with careful lighting. There's also a light-up base for the 8-inch speaker which you can see in the image at the top of this piece, to give them a classy aura. 

Finally, the system is designed to be modular, with many of the speaker and light elements being able to clip together to form bigger units according to your needs. That's a fun footnote to what looks like an interesting range. 

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