IKEA already sold the honest speaker. It was the $10 Kallsup: battery, loud colors, small enough to live in a drawer. On September 11, Gizmodo and The Verge both ran the sequel. BÄDKRUKA is $60. It plugs into the wall. It has an optical port and an optical cable in the box. You can pair two of them for stereo. You can point it at a TV. You cannot take it to the kitchen without hunting for an outlet.
That is not a better Kallsup. That is a second speaker with a grown-up job. Minimalism only cares about the second part.
The $10 object already did the job
Kallsup was a one-job product. Play a phone in a room that does not have a stereo. Charge it. Put it away. The colors were a bit much. That is fine. A $10 object is allowed to look like a $10 object.
BÄDKRUKA keeps the Bluetooth and the multi-room pairing, then adds the home-theater story: optical in, EQ modes, Spotify Tap, black or pink instead of the yellow-green. Gizmodo’s line is the one that should stop the cart: it is wired-only. No rechargeable battery. The “serious sibling” is a piece of furniture that needs a socket.
If you already own Kallsup, you do not have a speaker problem. You have a catalog problem. IKEA is good at this. We already watched Kallax show up in Skyrim and a vinyl console that still has a load rating. Same company, same move: take a thing people actually use, grow it, and sell the growth as an upgrade.
One-in-one-out is not a vibe here
A speaker that lives on a shelf and a speaker that lives on a cord are not interchangeable. Keep Kallsup if you move rooms. Buy BÄDKRUKA only if you are replacing a soundbar or a pair of computer speakers that already occupy that wall. Then the $10 unit leaves the house. Donate it. Do not “keep it for the patio” unless the patio is a real room you use weekly.
Two IKEA speakers is how a kitchen counter collects gadgets. The optical cable is a tell. It exists because this product wants to sit behind a TV, not in a tote. If you do not have a TV input waiting, you are buying a cable you will lose in a drawer. We already argued that curated clutter still needs a job. A spare optical lead is not a job.
Price is the other filter. Sixty dollars is not a fortune. It is six Kallsups. If the point of IKEA audio was “good enough and cheap,” the $60 unit is hunting a different shopper: the person who wants the brand on a desk that already has a lamp and a plant. That desk does not get quieter when you add a brick with a power cord.
What “wired-only” actually costs
Battery speakers fail in one obvious way. They are dead when you want them. Wired speakers fail in a slower way. They claim a corner. They need a surge strip. They train you to leave them out because unplugging is annoying. The object stops being portable in your head even if you could theoretically move it.
If your apartment has two rooms and one decent outlet behind the sofa, BÄDKRUKA will live there until you move out. That can be correct. A cheap soundbar replacement with Bluetooth and an optical in is a real product. Call it that. Do not call it an upgraded Kallsup. The $10 unit was a tool. The $60 unit is a fixture.
Gizmodo also notes the color cut. Black and pink, “understated.” Fine for a shelf you photograph. Worse if the only reason you liked Kallsup was that it did not look like every other black rectangle in the living room. Looks are not a moral category. They are how you notice you bought a duplicate.
The Saturday test
Before you add BÄDKRUKA to a bag:
- Count speakers you already own, including the soundbar, the PC pair, and the Bluetooth brick in the junk drawer.
- Name the room this one will occupy. If the answer is “we’ll see,” you are not buying a speaker. You are buying an option.
- If Kallsup still charges and still plays, it stays or it leaves. It does not become a backup. Backups are how $10 objects multiply.
- If you need TV audio, measure the optical port on the TV first. IKEA included the cable because the product is a home-theater accessory. Confirm the TV still has the jack. Many newer sets dropped it.
Reverse-decluttering had its week on this site. This is the other direction. The catalog will always offer a larger, duller, more “serious” version of the cheap thing that already works. The serious version is allowed to exist. It is not entitled to a place next to the original.
If the $10 speaker still makes noise, you are done. The $60 one can wait for the day you actually retire a soundbar. Until then, the empty outlet behind the sofa is a feature.
