Anyone playing music in a single room needs a speaker. Anyone who wants it to move with them from the sitting room to the kitchen to the yard needs something else: a network of speakers that know one another.
JBL announced the Cove family on 1 September — three Wi-Fi speakers, each usable on its own, or two together as left and right, or all of them as one group run from a single app.
Three sizes for three situations
- Cove M1 — the smallest, mains-powered, with two thirty-millimetre tweeters, a third at twenty millimetres, and a four-inch bass cone.
- Cove P1 — the portable, with a battery running fourteen hours, IP56 dust and water resistance, three thirty-millimetre tweeters, a fourth at twenty, and a four-inch bass cone.
- Cove X1 — the largest, mains-powered, with four thirty-millimetre tweeters and two four-inch bass cones.
Surround sound in two of them, not three
Dolby Atmos is available on P1 and X1 only. The M1 has none, and that is the line between a speaker you put in a bedroom and a speaker you build a sitting room around.
What it accepts
The speakers take Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with AirPlay 2 and Google Cast alongside, direct streaming from Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz, and Roon compatibility. High-resolution audio is supported.
Prices and release
- Cove M1: $229.95.
- Cove P1: $399.95.
- Cove X1: $449.95.
Sales begin on 13 September 2026.
The practical point
The value of a system like this is not in one speaker but in being able to add a second a year later and have it fold in with the first without rebuilding anything. That is what separates a speaker network from a Bluetooth box carried between rooms.
Photo: the grille of a wireless speaker, close up. By Tom Swinnen, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: the JBL press release on the Harman newsroom, 1 September 2026.
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