Chosen Solution
Hello, Until yesterday, I had a Macbook Pro 13” 2018. Paired to it, the Airpods Pro. I was very surprised that the headphones worked not only in the openspace-office, but also in the workshop which was at ±25m (air)distance and separated by a concrete wall. Today I switched to the new Macbook Pro 16”. The positive surprise from yesterday turned into a very negative one: As soon as I’m at a distance more than 10m from the notebook, the music cuts. Same application, same software configuration (Migration assistant), only new MBP. Does the new MBP have a much weaker bluetooth antenna, or “what the range” happens? Thx in advance!
Just looking at the teardown between the 2019 16” and the 15” models you can see there is really no difference in the antennas
2019 MacBook Pro 16”
2019 MacBook Pro 15” Looking at the logic boards we can see a slight difference! Light Blue marked chip Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module
2019 MacBook Pro 16” - 339S00610
2019 MacBook Pro 15” - 339S00458 While the chips them selves have different markings, as these are custom chip we just don’t know what’s different inside. Both list WiFi 802.11ac & Bluetooth 5.0 support so I can’t see a reason to alter the WiFi/Bluetooth transceiver chip. So… I would double check another system to see if you got a bad one. The antenna cables could be damaged or could have been connected incorrectly.
Running MacOS 10.15.6 and still have bluetooth range issues….
