IKEA today unveiled a new speaker in collaboration with Sonos, the Symfonisk Picture Frame. The speaker is a flat speaker with a depth of only a few centimeters and is designed to be mounted on a wall, allowing the speaker to be placed where it would otherwise be impossible to place an audio source.

The IKEA Symfomisk Picture Frame speaker costs $199 and will be available at IKEA stores and on the IKEA website on July 15. Below is everything IKEA has revealed about its latest audio products.

To reproduce robust audio, speakers need to move large amounts of air. However, in order to create something that is thin enough to be mounted on a wall (2.4 inches deep), but can still deliver the same resonance, this latest IKEA Symfonisk speaker is extremely wide. This is similar to what Apple did with the iMac 2021 and what Sony did with the acoustic surface audio of the Sony Bravia A8H OLED TV.

Picture Frame speakers have one woofer and one tweeter, and a wave guide delivers the audio from the tweeter to fill the room.

Two Picture Frame speakers can be paired together for stereo sound, but they cannot be paired with other speakers. However, they can be added to a Sonos multi-room audio setup and can be configured as rear surround sound with Sonos Playbar, Playbase, Sonos Amp, Sonos Arc, and Sonos Beam. The Picture Frame speakers support Wi-Fi and Airplay 2, but do not have Bluetooth. Also, like other symphonic speakers, it will not have a built-in smart assistant. [The Picture Frame speaker comes in white or black and has a removable acoustic panel on the front with an abstract design. During the presentation, an IKEA representative suggested that other panel designs may appear in the future.

The speakers are quite large and can be mounted on the wall or propped up on a shelf; a second speaker can be connected to the first, so only one outlet is needed.

The Simphonisk Picture Frame Speaker is the third collaboration between Sonos and IKEA; the first partnership resulted in the IKEA Simphonisk Bookshelf Speaker, which sells for under $100.

These speakers are expected to be very popular with people who want to install a home theater but do not want to go through the hassle of drilling holes in the wall to install speakers or do not have the space for large bookshelf speakers. It will be interesting to see how the picture frames look and, more importantly, how they sound.