Ikea’s $10 Kallsup Bluetooth speaker embodies a delightful paradox: it’s fun, unapologetically colorful, and delivers an audio experience that significantly punches above its minuscule price tag. While it won’t redefine your understanding of high-fidelity sound – let’s be realistic, it is a mere $10 speaker – its performance is surprisingly competent. What it lacks in sophisticated features, it compensates for with a singular, standout capability: the ability to wirelessly connect up to 100 of these compact units together. At such an accessible price point, the absence of complex functionalities becomes entirely forgivable; these speakers are designed to be a quick, vibrant, and sonically pleasing addition, whether brightening up a workspace or adding a playful burst of sound to a child’s bedroom.
The Kallsup is a testament to minimalist design in the realm of portable audio. Encased in a simple 2.75-inch plastic cube, it features four short feet on its base for stability and houses a single speaker driver within. Its aesthetic is further enhanced by a choice of three cheerful colors: pink, white, and yellow-green, making it easy to integrate into various decor schemes or to use as a deliberate pop of color. The user interface is equally straightforward, consisting of just two physical buttons and a small LED indicator located on the top surface, alongside a modern USB-C charging port discreetly placed on the back. Operating the Kallsup is intuitive: the button marked with a Bluetooth symbol serves multiple purposes – it powers the speaker on, greeting the user with a brief, cheerful jingle, and then automatically enters pairing mode. During this waiting period, it emits some rather peculiar, almost ‘breathing’ noises, adding a touch of quirky personality. This same button also allows for powering off the device or re-entering pairing mode to switch between source devices. The second button, adorned with a play symbol, offers standard media controls: play, pause, skip to the next track, or repeat the previous one. More interestingly, this button is also the gateway to its unique multi-speaker functionality, enabling connection with up to 99 additional Kallsups. From the moment of activation to successful device pairing, the entire process typically takes a swift 10 to 20 seconds, a commendable speed for such an affordable gadget.
My expectations for a $10 speaker were, naturally, quite low. However, even a single Kallsup unit managed to pleasantly surprise me. When operated at moderate volume levels, the speaker performs admirably for casual listening, serving as excellent background music or providing clear audio for podcasts and audiobooks. In fact, when placed on my desk, I found its sound profile preferable to the often thin and uninspiring built-in speakers of my M4 MacBook Air. The improvement was noticeable, offering a fuller, albeit still compact, soundstage.
Given the Kallsup’s diminutive driver size, a robust bass response is, predictably, not its strong suit. Nevertheless, it manages to deliver more low-end presence than my laptop’s integrated speakers, providing a foundation that, while not deep, adds a degree of warmth. As is characteristic of small, single-driver speakers, the audio frequency emphasis is primarily on the midrange. This focus translates into excellent clarity for vocals and spoken word, making it particularly well-suited for podcasts, audiobooks, and vocal-centric music genres. While pushing the speaker to its maximum volume can introduce some slight distortion, particularly with tracks rich in high-frequency elements, I rarely felt the need to blast this tiny speaker, especially when listening at close range on my desk. Its purpose isn’t to fill a large room with booming sound, but to provide personal, clear audio, and in that regard, it excels within its limitations.
The true highlight and the feature that captured significant attention upon its announcement at CES was the Kallsup’s remarkable capability to connect up to 100 units. This daisy-chaining function is surprisingly simple to execute and offers a genuinely effective method for distributing sound more broadly across a space while simultaneously boosting the overall volume output. To put this to the test, I gathered 20 Kallsup speakers. Using a decibel (dB) meter from a few inches away, a pink noise test signal registered 86 dB with a single speaker. When all 20 units were linked and playing in unison, the reading climbed to 94 dB. This 8 dB increase, while numerically modest, translates to a nearly doubled perceived volume, dramatically altering the soundscape. Spreading these speakers strategically around a room genuinely provides a more expansive and louder audio experience. Imagine them artfully placed on shelves, tucked into corners, or even lining a hallway, creating a continuous flow of sound that a single speaker, regardless of its power, simply cannot achieve. This distributed sound offers a unique ambiance, perfect for gatherings, background music across multiple zones, or simply enjoying your favorite tunes without having a single, dominant sound source. However, it’s crucial to note that despite the impressive multi-speaker capability, each Kallsup remains a mono speaker, and there is currently no provision to configure two units as a stereo pair. While the increased volume and coverage are undeniable benefits, a true stereo soundstage remains out of reach.
The ultimate question, prompted by the very title of this article, revolved around how a collective of these budget-friendly Ikea speakers would fare against established, higher-priced Bluetooth alternatives. I pitted $200 worth of Kallsup speakers (20 units) against three popular options: the $269 Bose SoundLink Plus, the $189 Amazon Echo Studio, and the $179 Sonos Roam 2. This was, in many ways, an intriguing, if perhaps unfair, showdown, a David vs. Goliath scenario in the world of portable audio. Unsurprisingly, the Ikea array, while sounding “okay” and providing a unique distributed sound, couldn’t match the overall audio fidelity of its more expensive competitors. All three premium speakers delivered a more balanced and refined response across the entire frequency range.
The Amazon Echo Studio emerged as my personal favorite among the premium options, largely due to its impressive balance of low-end depth, well-defined mids, and crisp highs, creating a truly immersive sound profile. However, its primary drawback in this comparison is its lack of portability, as it requires constant power and is designed for a fixed location. In contrast, the Bose SoundLink Plus proved to be a powerhouse, achieving significantly higher volumes than even the combined output of all 20 Kallsup speakers. Its robust sound is built for filling larger spaces with powerful audio. The Sonos Roam 2, meanwhile, offered a sound that was not only more balanced and nuanced than the Kallsup array but also delivered superior portability, fitting neatly into the compact Bluetooth speaker category while integrating seamlessly into the wider Sonos ecosystem.
Beyond sheer sound quality, the feature set of the higher-end speakers further justifies their price premium. Both the Bose and Sonos units boast an IP67 rating, making them dust- and water-resistant – a crucial feature for outdoor adventures or poolside listening, something the Kallsup speakers, with no official IP rating, cannot offer. The Roam 2 benefits from its integration into the comprehensive Sonos ecosystem, allowing for multi-room audio and seamless connectivity with other Sonos devices. The Echo Studio, as a smart speaker, offers far more than just music playback; it can perform tasks like ordering groceries or controlling smart home devices through voice commands. The Kallsup, in stark contrast, is a very simple Bluetooth speaker. And 20 of them, while creating a larger sound field, remain, at their core, 20 very simple Bluetooth speakers. They offer no smart features, no weather resistance, and no advanced connectivity beyond their unique daisy-chaining.
While the prospect of stacking or spreading out multiple Kallsup speakers increases their volume and expands their coverage area, the practicalities of managing such an array can quickly become cumbersome and time-consuming. Activating and pairing a single speaker takes a quick 10 to 20 seconds, but when you multiply that by 20 units, the setup process stretches into several minutes – a minor ritual that might test one’s patience before a casual listening session. Furthermore, the connection established between these speakers is not maintained once they are powered down. This means that every time you wish to enjoy your multi-speaker setup, you’ll need to repeat the entire pairing process, which can be a significant deterrent for spontaneous use. Then there’s the logistical challenge of power. Each Kallsup boasts a respectable nine hours of battery life, but when 20 of them run dry simultaneously, the hunt for 20 unused USB-C charging ports can quickly turn into a veritable “USB-C octopus” situation, a tangle of cables and power bricks. Adding to these minor frustrations is the Kallsup’s rather peculiar charging notification: when plugged in, each speaker emits a somewhat disconcerting “aahhhh” sound. Hearing this in unison from multiple speakers as you plug them in creates a rather comical, yet slightly irritating, chorus that I could certainly do without.
Despite these practical limitations when scaling up to a large array, the individual or small grouping of Kallsup speakers offers undeniable charm and value. They are a fun, colorful, and undeniably cute way to infuse sound into your personal space. I can easily envision several units strategically placed around a child’s room – my 10-year-old son, for instance, was instantly captivated by their vibrant aesthetic when I arranged them for photographs. Alternatively, a single Kallsup can serve as a delightful and functional pop of color on a desk or bedside table. Ultimately, for a mere $10, the Ikea Kallsup speakers transcend their budget price point, delivering a surprisingly decent audio experience and a unique, playful approach to distributed sound. They are not designed to compete with high-end audio systems but rather to offer an accessible, enjoyable, and aesthetically pleasing audio solution that more than lives up to its modest cost.
Photography by John Higgins / The Verge
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