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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- JBL debuts three new Wi-Fi home speakers.
- The speakers support most wireless streaming options.
- JBL’s advantage is its leverage of Auracast to link its wide catalog of audio products.
JBL is reentering the smart speaker market, dropping three models into a significantly crowded pool filled with speakers from Google, Sonos, Bose, Denon, and more. The JBL Cove P1, M1, and X1 home speakers differ from JBL’s past releases by offering sleek designs, several wireless streaming options, and the easy-to-use interface that the market demands.
I flew to New York City to get an exclusive look at them, and my first impression was slightly puzzling: There’s not much about the speakers that’s particularly unique to JBL, but that might be their greatest strength. Let me explain.
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All three Cove speakers sound great; their sound profile is characterized by an emphasized bass response, slightly recessed mids, and pronounced highs. This sound signature is widely appreciated, as it lends a bass-boosted, energetic sound ripe for small gatherings and solo jam sessions in your living room.
Each speaker is fitted with Auracast, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Google Cast, Apple AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connect, Alexa built-in, and integrations with Roon and Google Home.
The Cove P1 and M1 will be compatible with the JBL Bar 300, 500, 700, 1000, and 1300MK2 at launch, allowing you to create a home theater setup.
The Cove P1 is small but mighty
The JBL Cove P1 is the smallest of the bunch and best for kitchen, bathroom, and bedside tabletops, but if you get your hands on two of them, you can make a solid stereo setup. Though the P1 blended in beautifully in the swanky NoHo apartment where I demoed it, I can see its muted, nondescript design (which is generally uncharacteristic of JBL) fitting well in any home.
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I found the P1 most similar to the Sonos Era 100 in stature and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra in its limitless wireless connectivity options. It features three tweeters and one woofer, which is on-brand for JBL’s sound signature. Despite its small frame, the P1’s low end was massively present, with energetic highs to complement it.
The Cove M1 middle child is versatile
I found the JBL Cove M1 to be the most interesting of the trio, likely because it reminded me of the Sonos Play, another wired/wireless hybrid home speaker that performs as well on the patio as it does in the family room. However, JBL’s M1 sports a wider base than the Sonos Play, making it more stable in unpredictable outdoor environments. Plus, the M1 has an IP56 durability rating, so it’s just as suited for kitchen spills as it is for poolside splashes.
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The Cove M1 has an accompanying charging dock for when it needs juice and a 14-hour internal rechargeable battery for when you want to move it. I find the Cove M1, like the Sonos Play, to be the best option for people who want to cash in on their preferred manufacturer’s ecosystem but don’t want to invest in five or more speakers around the house.
The larger Cove X1 may be too much for some
The JBL Cove X1 is a variant of the Sonos Era 300 and Denon Home 400, with a larger frame to accommodate three tweeters, one upfiring speaker, and two woofers — it’s a big boy. In my demonstration, I asked to ramp up the X1’s volume to see what it was made of, and gee, did it deliver what I wanted.
If you go with this speaker, you’ll want space in your home to crank up the volume and let it shine; otherwise, the $500 price tag is too steep to justify. JBL mentioned that the X1 will lack backward compatibility with select JBL soundbars for TV watching, but it can be grouped with a JBL soundbar for music playback.
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Given its stature, I’d be against buying the Cove X1 to behave as a rear speaker anyway, especially if I needed to mount it (which I’m not sure is possible). Its wide base suggests it’s meant to sit atop a table.
I envisioned the X1 working well for someone who lives alone and needs only one smart speaker to provide music throughout their space. It gets plenty loud to be heard throughout an apartment or townhome, even when you’re moving around your space.
A new feature that needs refining
All three Cove speakers debut with a new Moment button, which adds another speaker to your existing stream when activated. For example, if your P1 is playing music in the kitchen, you can walk over to another P1 in the living room, press its Moment button, and it will sync with the kitchen P1.
Though I can see this feature being useful if you don’t want to pull out your phone to achieve the same speaker grouping results, adding functionality to the Moment button would transform it from a good feature to a great feature.
For example, I’d like it if you could long-press the Moment button to add a speaker to a stream and short-press it to move music from one room to another, pausing the first speaker’s music and starting the music on the second speaker.
Final verdict
The JBL Cove smart speakers are a solid step forward from JBL’s older, more eccentric Authentics Wi-Fi speakers. They sound great, are easy to use, and offer several connectivity options with few ecosystem barriers.
Unlike Google, which has Gemini; Sonos, which has a robust digital platform backed by its hardware ecosystem; and Apple, whose speaker seamlessly integrates with your Apple devices, JBL’s speakers don’t necessarily have an “it” factor that encourages you to lock in with its brand.
Yet, JBL’s ecosystem openness may be its “it” factor, with the company staying true to its vow to let users mix and match manufacturers and device categories across use cases. If you want a house full of smart speakers that can easily get along with the other speakers — including those from JBL — and Alexa-enabled smart home devices in your house, look no further than JBL.
