In the past, Bluetooth was a new, strange and advanced wireless technology. For those of us who remember using infrared on very stupid phones, Bluetooth seemed like magic. Almost everyone uses BT today, and it has become an integral part of our lives.
This is largely due to the ongoing improvements that were made to the original release. At the time of writing, Bluetooth 5.1 has been announced.
Each version brings with it new features and improvements. All versions are also backward compatible, but in general you will be limited to the functions supported by the hardware of the lowest BT.
In other words, if this trendy new BT mouse supports ultra-efficient power consumption and your laptop’s BT version does not, you are paying for a feature you cannot use.
While peripherals usually list their Bluetooth number in bold on the box, figuring out the version of your on-board adapter can be tricky. Luckily, you can get this information straight from Windows 10 if you don’t mind digging around in the menu a bit.
Get your Bluetooth version of Windows 10
The first thing you need to do is open the Device Manager. You can find it by opening the start menu and searching.
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Open Device Manager. It should look like this.
Now expand the Bluetooth category.
Right click on the appropriate BT adapter and select Properties.
In the Advanced tab, note down the LMP number.] These are now the BT version numbers and the LMP numbers they correspond to.
- LMP 0 – Bluetooth 1.0b
- LMP 1 – Bluetooth 1.1
- LMP 2 – Bluetooth 1.2
- LMP 3 – Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
- LMP 4 – Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
- LMP 5 – Bluetooth 3.0 + HS
- LMP 6 – Bluetooth 4.0
- LMP 7 – Bluetooth 4.1
- LMP 8 – Bluetooth 4.2
- LMP 9 – Bluetooth 5
It’s a pretty tricky path to get the version number, but now at least you can figure out what features your computer has!
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