- AirPlay uses lossless compression to stream audio from source to speaker. All Bluetooth audio streaming uses lossy compression.
- AirPlay has the capability of playing across a much larger distance and with a solid connection between devices than Bluetooth.
- When using AirPlay you’re actually capable of controlling the volume of the Airplay speaker (not just the volume of the device which transfers to the Bluetooth device).
- Airplay can stream to multiple output devices. Bluetooth is one-to-one streaming.
- AirPlay caches multiple minutes of Audio (or Video). AFAIK Bluetooth does not cache.
A sibling comment talked about using a Sonos with Bluetooth, but having delay issues. There is no lag on AirPlay: