Because that is how Bluetooth is specified. Bluetooth is primarily used for audio, where high throughput is not the most important parameter. Expected Bluetooth throughput is less than 2 Mbps, see more here https://www.bluetooth.com/...

WiFi on the other hand, has peak throughput above 1 Gbps. So your observations are as expected.

Bluetooth is not really made for transferring large amounts of data. While the current WiFi standard, WiFi 6e, supports theoretical data rates of up to 9.6Gbps, the current Bluetooth standard, 5.1, only supports up to 50mbps.

This is because Bluetooth is focussing on low energy data transmission and in fact, the LE profile of Bluetooth 5 only supports up to 2mbps. For the kinds of devices it is made for (headphones, smartwatches, etc) that is plenty and the advantage to battery life has priority.

WiFi on the other hand is purpose built for a higher data throughput. Bluetooth was never really meant for transferring large files, it just happens to be capable of doing so. There’s a reason Apple for example implemented their AirDrop feature years ago because making the handshake via Bluetooth yet sending the actual data via WiFi is a much better solution.

The distance to the other device doesn’t matter so much for speed as long as it’s not too far away and not blocked. You can imagine it like that: if you take a 10km hike from place A to B, that is the shorter distance. But if you get into your car and drive to town C that’s 30km away from either A and B and then on town B, all on a highway, you’ll be in town B 4x as fast as on foot but you‘ll have burnt 5 litres of gasoline.

Bluetooth is not meant for large file transfers. It is meant for very small amounts of data and uses very narrow bandwidth channels, which makes the speed quite slow.

Comparing distance from devices is not important (within reason), but limitations of the hardware. Bluetooth has a low limit, WLAN is high (two megabytes/bits is likely your internet speed, are you talking about sending from devices to your computer?). If you are uploaded to the internet, four minutes at 2MB/s sounds correct.

If you are sending from a 2019 device, it will top out at the max speed it can do, which may be under 1Mbps.

Bluetooth is meant for low-power applications. We're talking 2.5 milliwatts of power on the high end. For that purpose, it's a low-bandwidth, short range protocol.

It was designed for low power short range use. This made it ideal for electronics back in the day when small batteries with huge capacity didn't exist. It's also pretty easy to interfere with a bt signal and lower the transfer speed even more.

The reason it stayed this way is because it's not really worth the investment to make it have high transfer speeds because there are already better alternatives.

Bluetooth is geared towards energy saving tech and has much less bandwidth than 802.11 networks. As you've found, it works but there are better ways.

802.11 has much more sophisticated tech like multiple channels, much greater bandwidth, higher transmit power, and even phased antennas.

Therefore, while Bluetooth has a max throughput of 2Mbps, WiFi6 has 9608Mbps.

Because Bluetooth is simply a different protocol for a different purpose. It's intended for low latency, short range, low power, high stability. And this comes at a cost.

A given protocol can't just arbitrarily increase speeds. It's limited by factors like bandwidth, modulations, etc.

I dunno Bluetooth kinda blew me away recently but it was when I bought a new phone. The range of my earbuds suddenly started working perfectly even when I think I was about 50 meters away.

I presume the newer Bluetooth version made this happen when before it wad like maybe a room away maybe 15 meters at best.