JBL is moving into whole-home wireless audio with Cove, a range of three Wi-Fi speakers that play music in sync across a house or stream different tracks to individual rooms. It expands the audio brand further into multi-room audio, a category Sonos has dominated for years.
Cove will come in three models, sold in white or black: the compact M1 at €229.99 (about $267), the battery-powered P1 at €449.99 (about $523), and the flagship X1 at €499.99 (about $581), JBL says. The company listed availability only as 2026, set no firm release date, and did not give US pricing, though it said an Alexa+ voice-control update would come to the US first.
"JBL Cove marks an important step in our ambition to become a leading force in home audio," said Carsten Olesen, HARMAN's president of consumer audio. Each Cove speaker can run on its own, pair into stereo, or join a multi-room group managed through the JBL One app, JBL says. The company positions the M1 for everyday listening, the P1 as a portable option with a battery, and the X1 for larger rooms, and says the P1 and X1 support Dolby Atmos while the M1 does not.
JBL attributes the sound to in-house technologies it calls Constant Sound Field, automatic self-tuning, and AI Sound Boost, which the company says adapt output to a room and cut distortion at high volume. Setup takes three steps with no account required, per JBL, and a physical Moment button triggers what the company calls Music Follows Me, shifting playback between rooms without a phone. JBL lists Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming plus AirPlay, Google Cast, Roon Ready, and Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz Connect, with Alexa+ voice control planned for a later software update.
Cove also works with JBL's Bar Series MK2 soundbars, and the company says the P1 and M1, though not the flagship X1, can act as wireless rear channels for them at launch, putting the surround-sound option on the cheaper models first. The harder gap is commercial. Whole-home audio buyers tend to settle into one ecosystem and stay there, so an unspecified on-sale date and no US price make it difficult to judge how Cove stacks up against entrenched lines from Sonos and Amazon.
