The new Bluetooth specification will supposedly allow devices to double the speed and quadruple the range compared to Bluetooth 4:
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced that the next version of its nigh-ubiquitous wireless technology is now available.
Bluetooth 5 boasts many improvements over its predecessor. It's said to offer twice the speed, four times the range, and eight times the broadcasting message capacity of Bluetooth 4. This new version is also supposed to work better while other wireless signals like Wi-Fi are active. All of these improvements combine to allow Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other connected products to be far more reliable than they were in the past.
Also at CNET, The Verge, and Engadget.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:23PM
It depends on what ones you buy, where you're using them and a few other factors. Most of the bluetooth devices I've used worked just fine. The main issues being that they generally wouldn't work properly outside the Win/OSX/phone world. Just last week I tried hooking a pair up to Linux and the sound works fine, but there's a major bug with the bluetooth stack that prevented it from using the mic. When I'm feeling less lazy, I'll look into it, but it appears to be broken for at least 3 years with no sign of being addressed in the future.