Bluetooth -v- Thread

Sandtree

Have seen a few small smart appliances recently that state they are using Thread as their communication mechanism rather than bluetooth recently. Never really had the best experiences with bluetooth and wondered if others had had experience with both and can say if its worth spending the bit more to get Thread support?

CoastingHatbox

Thread isn't comparable to Bluetooth. It is comparable to Bluetooth Mesh, itself based on Bluetooth Low Energy.
These are mesh networking technologies intended for IoT devices.

https://www.silabs.com/wireless/multiprotocol/mesh-performance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)

Sandtree

CoastingHatbox said:

Thread isn't comparable to Bluetooth. It is comparable to Bluetooth Mesh, itself based on Bluetooth Low Energy.
These are mesh networking technologies intended for IoT devices.

And if there was a device that worked on "bluetooth" (according to the ad) or an otherwise identical item that works on Thread for £5 more would the differing technology be worth the price difference?

CoastingHatbox

Sandtree said:

CoastingHatbox said:

Thread isn't comparable to Bluetooth. It is comparable to Bluetooth Mesh, itself based on Bluetooth Low Energy.
These are mesh networking technologies intended for IoT devices.

And if there was a device that worked on "bluetooth" (according to the ad) or an otherwise identical item that works on Thread for £5 more would the differing technology be worth the price difference?

That's absolutely impossible to say without knowing the use case, the RF environment they are used in and, well, quality of the implementation. These technologies are standards after all, and how well something works using a given standard often depends on how it is implemented and design decisions like, how well matched the antennas are to the radio etc. etc.

To be honest I would look at other features of the devices and objective reviews in order to try and distinguish between them.