The Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced version 6.0 of the near-ubiquitous wireless technology in Sept. 2024, adding some major new features that aim to improve Bluetooth’s reliability, security, smoothness and efficiency. It might even get you a greater range between your headphones and phone, as well as longer battery life.
We’re finally seeing devices arrive with Bluetooth 6.0, including phones from Apple and Google, as well as headphones and earbuds. Here’s what you need to know about Bluetooth 6.0 and how it will affect wireless connectivity for years to come.
Main improvements of Bluetooth 6.0
Latency
Latency is the time between an audio signal being sent and when you actually hear it. The higher the latency, the more annoying it can be — think of when the sound lags behind the video in movies or games. Most Bluetooth (5.0 and newer) devices have latency somewhere between 50 to 100 milliseconds, depending on gear and configuration, which is noticeable to most people.
Bluetooth 6.0’s new isochronous adaptive layer, or ISOAL, allows devices to break up audio data into smaller chunks for quicker processing. In theory, this has the potential to reduce latency, and it’s possible that we might see latency under 10 milliseconds under ideal conditions, such as close range, no obstacles and no interference.
We expect that under real-world conditions, the majority of setups will operate at a latency of around 20 milliseconds, which would still represent a significant improvement over Bluetooth 5.x.
Location tracking and security
One of the new spec’s most buzzworthy features is called Channel Sounding, which provides a significant improvement in the accuracy of device location tracking. It relies on a back-and-forth exchange of data packets between connected devices and a combination of time stamps and frequency analysis, rather than the old, less accurate method of just measuring relative signal strength.
Channel Sounding is a boon for Apple’s Find My and its Google and Samsung equivalents, offering location accuracy down to approximately 10 centimeters, along with improved resistance to obstacles and interference. It also enables enhanced security for Bluetooth lock systems using a combination of encryption, randomization and location cross-referencing to ensure some random person isn’t unlocking your car or front door.
Power efficiency and pairing speed
The same features that reduce latency also help with power efficiency: Everything behaves intelligently to use more power for keeping audio and video in sync for things like gaming, and less power for less intensive applications like audiobooks. This flexibility is especially crucial for wireless earbuds, which require the most effective power management due to their compact size.
The process of scanning for nearby Bluetooth devices is also being upgraded, with decision-based advertiser filtering and monitoring. Advertising in this case doesn’t refer to selling you products. Basically, it’s a set of headphones broadcasting, “I’m a headset, and I’m nearby and ready to connect.”
Instead of constantly shouting, “Is anyone there?!” to see if there’s anything nearby to connect to, Bluetooth 6.0 devices will keep track when previously paired devices go in and out of range. This should save precious battery life, make pairing quicker and provide smoother multipoint switching.
What Bluetooth 6.0 doesn’t do
Improved Bluetooth sound quality (maybe)
Were you waiting for reliable, wireless lossless audio transmission from your phone to your headphones? Still not there yet.
Astute readers who note that CD-quality lossless audio transmission requires 1.4Mbps of throughput speed may wonder why Bluetooth 6.0’s theoretical 3Mbps isn’t enough. It’s because much of Bluetooth’s bandwidth is taken up by overhead — a bunch of ancillary data that’s required for secure Bluetooth connections that has nothing to do with audio. While there are some codecs that promise high-quality wireless audio, lossless CD-quality audio remains elusive.
Bluetooth 6.0 does bring the optional long-discussed LC3plus codec, which can transmit up to 24-bit and 96kHz audio. However, unlike “regular” LC3, this is an optional codec that has a separate licensing fee. That means there will be limited adoption compared to the more popular codecs. Remember, both your device and headphones must be compatible with LC3plus for it to work. How well it works and whether it can reliably transmit 24/96 in the real world remain to be seen.
A future incremental revision of Bluetooth 6.0 promises to add a high-data-throughput feature that will open up usable bandwidth for lossless streaming, potentially by using other frequency bands besides the crowded 2.4GHz band, to achieve speeds of up to 7.5Mbps. That should provide enough headroom to enable high-res audio streams, though it’s unclear if manufacturers will adopt the right codecs for lossless Bluetooth audio via headphones. Given past and current adoption rates for different Bluetooth codecs, it is unlikely to be Apple, and this technology will instead first find its way into lesser-known Android phones.
Where to find Bluetooth 6.0 right now
If you want to get a head start on Bluetooth 6.0 compatibility, there are a handful of devices already shipping (though not all of these are available in the US).
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