bluetooth 5.0 vs 4.2-Difference between bluetooth 5.0 and 4.2

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

advertising packet, data packet Bluetooth 4.2

The figure depicts advertising and data packet formats as per bluetooth 4.2 version. Refer BLE advertising and data packet formats >> for more information.

Bluetooth 5.0

Data-Frames bluetooth 5.0 Signaling Frame 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.
➤Refer new added features of recently released bluetooth version 5.1 >>.

Previous versions of Bluetooth 5.0 or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Related Links

Also refer bluetooth tutorial covering following sub topics:
Main Page  Frequency  PHY Layer  MAC layer  Stack  Power classes  Security  products  Bluetooth Vs BLE  Bluetooth vs zigbee   Bluetooth Vs WiFi vs NFC vs RFID  Difference between Bluetooth Versions 


BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) Links

BLE Protocol Stack BLE connection establishment procedure

Bluetooth v5.0 versus v5.1 >>
BLE states and state diagram >>
BLE advertising and data channels >>
BLE protocol stack architecture >>
BLE connection process >>
BLE advertising and data packet formats >>


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