JBL launches Cove speakers in more markets with Sonos-style whole-home audio

JBL has expanded its Cove whole-home speaker system to more markets, with the three Wi-Fi speakers going on sale in the UK this month. The Cove M1 costs £199.99, the Cove P1 £399.99, and the Cove X1 £429.99, with black and white finishes sold through JBL.com. The system works a lot like Sonos, linking speakers across the home and running them from a single app.

The speakers are the first to run on JBL's own in-house wireless platform. Like Sonos products, they connect over a home Wi-Fi network rather than pairing directly with a phone, so playback carries on when the phone leaves the room or takes a call. Owners can run one speaker on its own, combine two matching models into a stereo pair, or spread several across the house to play the same track in every room or different music in each.

Control runs through the JBL One app, which JBL says sets up a speaker in three steps without requiring an account. Each speaker also carries a Moment button. A single press starts a saved playlist, radio station, or Spotify Tap session, while pressing and holding it pulls whatever is playing elsewhere in the house into the current room, a feature JBL calls Music Follows Me. Switching from a whole-home session to a single room does not require ungrouping or resetting the speakers, according to the company.

Room calibration follows the same idea as Sonos's Trueplay tuning. All three Cove models use automatic self-tuning to adjust their output to the space they sit in. They also run JBL's Constant Sound Field technology, which aims to keep audio balanced across the room, and AI Sound Boost, which JBL says reduces distortion at high volume.

The Cove M1 is the entry point to the range and lines up most closely with the Sonos Era 100. It is a mains-powered 3.0-channel speaker rated at 110W, using three 20mm tweeters and a 4-inch woofer, and JBL pitches it for small and medium rooms. It does not support Dolby Atmos.

The Cove P1 combines features that Sonos splits across two products. Like the Sonos Move 2, it has a built-in battery, rated at up to 14 hours, along with an IP56 rating for dust and water resistance and a charging dock in the box. Like the Sonos Era 300, it plays Dolby Atmos Music through an up-firing driver. Four tweeters and a 4-inch woofer share 120W of power.

The 200W Cove X1 sits at the top of the range and is designed as the main speaker for larger rooms. It pairs four 30mm tweeters, one of them firing upward for Atmos height effects, with two woofers. The X1 measures 10.2 inches wide, weighs close to 5kg, and has no battery.

Home theatre support also follows the Sonos pattern of turning music speakers into surrounds. Cove speakers link to JBL's Bar 300, 500, 800, 1000, and 1300 MK2 soundbars through the same app. At launch, two M1 or two P1 units can serve as wireless rear channels in a Dolby Atmos setup, while the X1 joins the soundbars for multi-room music only.

JBL supports a broader set of streaming standards than Sonos. Every Cove speaker handles Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and Qobuz Connect and is Roon Ready. Sonos speakers do not support Google Cast. Built-in voice control through Amazon’s Alexa+ will arrive via an over-the-air update later this year, although JBL has confirmed it only for the US so far.

JBL first announced Cove on September 1, and the speakers have been on sale in the US since September 13. US pricing stands at $229.95 for the M1, $399.95 for the P1 and $449.95 for the X1, placing the entry model against the $219 Sonos Era 100 and the flagship against the $479 Sonos Era 300.