Bluetooth 5.0 is popular for IoT(Internet of Things)and Bluetooth Beacon markets. Bluetooth 5.0 is the latest version of bluetooth specifications which is successor to Bluetooth 4.2 version. This page compares bluetooth 5.0 vs 4.2 and mentions difference between bluetooth 5.0 and 4.2 versions. It mentions basic features of bluetooth 5.0 and bluetooth 4.2 versions.
The Bluetooth 5 is backward compatible with previous bluetooth versions such as v1.2, v2, v2.1, v3, v4, v4.1 and v4.2. The specifications address the requirement of IoT devices which is lower power, longer range and higher speed. Due to these features, you could find Bluetooth 5 being incorporated in smart phone devices coming up in the early 2017.
Moreover, connectionless broadcasting was not much popular in bluetooth 4.2 due to limited message size of 31 bytes. With the increase of this size to 255 bytes, bluetooth 5 finds place in bluetooth compliant beacons used for advertising market by shopping mall and parking owners.
Bluetooth 4.2
Bluetooth 5.0
The figure depicts data frame and signaling frame formats as per bluetooth 5.0 version.
Following table mentions difference between bluetooth 5 and bluetooth 4.2.
| Specifications or features | Bluetooth 5.0 | Bluetooth 4.2 |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Higher, twice compare to Bluetooth 4.2 version Supports about 2 Mbps |
Lower, Supports about 1 Mbps |
| Range | Higher, four times compare to Bluetooth 4.2 version Supports 200 meters in Line Of Sight (LOS) path in outdoor environment, Supports 40 meters in indoor environment |
Lower, Supports 50 meters in Outdoor, Supports 10 meters in indoor |
| Power Requirement | Low | High |
| Message Capacity | Large, About 255 bytes | Small, About 31 bytes which gives just 17 to 20 bytes for actual data payload |
| Robustness to operate in congested environment | More | Less |
| Battery Life | Longer | Smaller |
| Security Control | Better | Less secure compare to Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Theoretical Data Throughput | 2 Mbps, gives about 1.6 Mbps with overhead | 1 Mbps |
| Reliability | High | Low |
| Digital Life | Better | Less better compare to Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Support for IoT devices | Yes | No |
| Bluetooth Beacon | Beacons have become more popular due to speed and range increase in bluetooth 5.0 version. | Beacons were less popular due to less speed/range as well as low message capacity of about 31 bytes. |
After comparing bluetooth 4.2 vs 5.0 and deriving tabular difference between bluetooth 4.2 and 5.0, it is imperative that bluetooth 5.0 will become popular in the smart phone devices, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and bluetooth Beacons. The popular bluetooth beacons available are iBeacon from Apple and Eddystone from Google.
