If you’re considering the gen2 AirPods, watch the video embedded below.
One point Rene highlights is that the new AirPods, courtesy of the H1 chip, are Bluetooth 5.0 compatible. Bluetooth 5.0 is about twice the speed of its predecessor (about 48MBps) and capable of longer distances between devices. Obviously, to gain these benefits, the devices on each end need to support Bluetooth 5.0.
Fortunately, all modern iPhones support Bluetooth 5.0 (the iPhone 8 does, the iPhone 7 is at Bluetooth 4.2). And Bluetooth 5.0 is backward compatible.
it’s not 48MBps – that’d be 384mbps and more than enough for any hi-fidelity lossless streaming (uncompressed audio in cd-quality has about 1,35 mbps or about 10 MB per minute). actually it’s up to 2 Mbps (0.25 MBps) and diminishes over distance to a measly 128 kbps (half the bitrate of a typical itunes song).
concentration, please, even 48mbps should have sounded quite strange when writing about bluetooth. and I don’t believe for a second that any tech-writer would confuse bits and bytes. 🙂