The top 3 home chargers

3. Myenergi

Rating 78.9%

In less than seven years, Myenergi has grown from a start-up with two employees to an international company. The brand’s original Zappi charger – launched in 2017 – was the first to be capable of using energy harvested by solar panels to charge EV batteries. Myenergi has a network of more than 3000 approved Zappi installers across the UK and has sold more than 500,000 products worldwide.

Myenergi gained a satisfaction rating of more than 90% in our survey, and only its fairly high total purchase and installation costs dented its score slightly. Respondents told us that 85% of their Zappi chargers were installed less than three months after ordering, with 44% paying £750-£1000 for the unit and installation, and 26% paying £1000 or more for a fully fitted system. 

Our experience

Tester Claire Evans
EV charger Myenergi Zappi V2 7kW
Price £1099 (typical installation) myenergi.com

“I had to wait more than six months for my Zappi charger to be fitted, but when the time came, it was installed in half a day.

“The system consists of the wallbox itself and a small hub next into my internet router, and there’s a phone app that can be used to schedule charging. The wallbox lights up when in use and there’s an illuminated information screen. There also four large buttons that enable you to set the charger without using the app. There’s also a quick-release switch, and this ensures that I never have any issues with a plug getting stuck in the charger or car.

“It’s a clever unit with three settings: Eco, Eco Plus and Fast. Eco will charge your car only when the cheapest off-peak tariff applies, Eco plus lets you use power from solar panels to charge the car, and Fast simply charges the car straightaway.

“The Zappi has only failed to charge a car overnight once. That was when a power cut caused a surge in power, with the charger turning itself off to protect the car’s battery.”

2. Hypervolt

Rating 80.5%

A relative newcomer to the home charging sector, Hypervolt was founded in 2018 and its chargers are designed and built in the UK. It offers chargers as standalone units or with fitting.

Helped by good customer service, it earned a 93.0% satisfaction rating – the highest of all nine brands in our survey. The promptness of installation was joint best alongside Indra and Ohme, with all units installed in less than three months.

The only area where Hypervolt lost marks was on cost, with chargers tending to be pricier than the average. Forty percent of owners told us they paid up to £750 for the unit and installation, while 60% paid more than that, and 35% said the cost was more than £1000

Our experience

Tester Matt Prior
EV charger Hypervolt Home 2.0 7kW
Price £1284 (fitted) hypervolt.co.uk

“I chose a Hypervolt unit on the recommendation of a local electrician and because the online reviews were good. The other important factor for me was that it can be supplied with a 10m-long integrated lead, which is crucial because it means I can lay it where I need across the garden without it being a trip hazard.

“The survey for the unit was done on a video chat and the installation took place just three weeks later. There are no controls on the box, but it does change colour to show what it’s doing.

“The charging has been flawless, but I’ve had issues with the app and online portal, due to the wifi connection. It can be a faff to get the app to talk to the charger via wifi, and if the connection goes down, the app/hub won’t display how much energy it has used when it comes back online. Things have improved since I had full fibre installed, though.

“The Home 2 has now been replaced by the Home 3, which includes both wireless and wired internet connections.”

1. Pod Point

Rating 82.2%

Founded in 2009, Pod Point is one of the UK’s largest electric vehicle charger providers, having installed 195,000 charging points at homes and businesses around the UK. It also works with a number of car brands, including Audi, BMW, Hyundai, Kia and Mercedes-Benz, and some major house-building companies.

Pod Point’s chargers are easy to use, reliable and relatively affordable to buy, according to our respondents, who voted it the best home charger provider. The UK brand gained the highest score for value, with nine out of 10 chargers costing £750 or less overall.

Service was among the quickest: 98% of chargers were installed in less than three months. Pod Point tops the table for satisfaction, too, with 85.7% of owners telling us they were very happy with their chargers. 

Our experience

Tester Jack Warwick
EV charger Pod Point Solo 2 7kW
Price £1033 (fitted) pod-point.com

“We chose a tethered wallbox with a 7.5-metre charging cable, because it means we don’t have to rummage around in each of our two electric cars to find a cable. The cable wraps nicely around the outside of the charger.

“The charger was installed exactly one month after being ordered. It has a small LED user interface and can be used via the Pod Point app, as long as there’s a stable enough wifi connection. Our unit has a single light, which is blue when it’s ready to charge and green when charging the car.

“The app lets you schedule a charge and see the cost of your at-home charging over a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. You’re also given access to a map of all the nearest public Pod Point charging stations.

“It has been extremely reliable, barring a few teething problems shortly after installation. It wouldn’t connect to our wifi correctly, but an engineer swiftly came out to fix the problem free of charge. This charger has now been replaced by the Solo 3 in Pod Point’s range.”

Home charger scores in detail

What Car? says…

Gaining the highest score for cost and one of the best for satisfaction, Pod Point is the top-rated home EV charger company overall. Survey respondents told us its units are reasonably priced, simple to use and dependable.

Providers of units that can make use of home produced energy, such as those from Myenergi and Ohme, also scored well for satisfaction, but higher prices brought their scores down.

At the other end of the scale, even though our respondents gave BP Pulse the second-highest score for cost, many customers weren’t satisfied with their units. Around 40% would not recommend the brand to someone looking to buy a home charger.

When it came to our own EV home charger experiences, our testers were generally happy with reliability and customer service. The main issue that blighted some home chargers related to flaky wifi connections.

This highlights the importance of investigating how a home charger system will connect to your internet before you buy. If your wifi is unreliable, choosing a charger with a wired ethernet connection might be of benefit, and it could be worth considering an upgrade to your internet package in advance.

Other home chargers tested

Evec

Tester Neil Winn
EV charger evec VEC01
Price £750 (fitted) evec.co.uk

"Switching from a traditional internal combustion engined car to an electric vehicle is not a cheap or particularly straightforward process. You could even argue it is a bit of a faff, which is why evec's (pronounced ee-vec) offer of a wallbox and fitting for £749.99 appealed to me. 

"Ordering took just a few clicks at evec.co.uk and the charger was delivered a few days later. Although it initially looked like I would have to wait a month to have my charger fitted, thanks to a last-minute cancellation I only had to wait a couple of weeks. As part of the installation process, the installer (Ascent Energy Services) asked me to fill out a survey so that the engineer could hit the ground running on arrival, which he duly did. 

"The box itself is straightforward. It has a round LED light that surrounds the charging port and a button located on the bottom of the device that you can use to reset the wi-fi or to perform an emergency stop. If the former glows blue you know that the device is in standby mode, whereas if it glows green you know you’re charging.. The only criticism I have of it is that I wish I could either turn the intensity of the light down or simply switch it off when the box isn’t in use. 

"The box itself doesn’t feel cheap, but the app could be better. The user interface isn’t the most intuitive and the online product manual isn’t written in a particularly user-friendly style. Every time I open the app I also get a warning that the wi-fi connection of the device is weak, but so far this hasn’t resulted in any connectivity problems. In fact, charging has been flawless, regardless of what car or motorcycle I’ve had plugged in."

Evios

Tester Alastair Clements
EV charger Evios One Charge Point
Price £1195 (fitted) myevios.com

“The feature that particularly drew me to the Evios One is that it’s PIN-controlled, which means up to six friends or relatives can use it with their own codes and I can monitor the cost.

“Installation is included, but because I wanted the unit concealed, I chose a pre-installation survey (£200, half of which is refunded with your order). The engineer recommended a 7.5m cable (rather than the standard 5m) for an extra £45, to enable the unit to be placed where I wanted.

“Ordering took just a few clicks at myevios.com and the charger was delivered within a few days. The engineer contacted me separately and did an excellent job, routing the cabling beneath the floor and fully explaining the app that controls and monitors the charger remotely.

“The unit can be used with solar panels and has a colour display, and it allows you to choose between fastest or most economical charging. And if you select your vehicle and electricity supplier tariff via the app, it gives an estimate of miles added and cost.”

Sync EV

Tester Piers Ward
EV charger Sync EV
Price £1780 (fitted) syncev.co.uk

“It took two months for my Sync EV home charger to be fitted, and that seemed reasonable to me. It has a simple-to-use app that enables you to gauge electricity usage. However, it doesn’t have any additional features such as letting you use solar-generated electricity.

“The wallbox doesn’t have an information screen – just a light around the plug socket that changes colour to let you know if it’s charging. Unfortunately, reliability has been very poor. The unit frequently has to be reset, and sometimes even given a hard reboot by turning the power off at the fuse board, because it failed to connect to the 4G network. This is despite there being a strong phone signal in the area.

“Overall, I’m extremely disappointed with it. I would much rather have had a unit without an app, but a button that I could press to get the charging started. The installer has been back to try to fix the issue. He tried to connect the charger to his laptop using the network, but even he couldn’t get it working properly.”

How to future-proof your home for charging

The Government has helped with this to some extent, by introducing the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021. These came into force on 30 June 2022 and require all newly installed chargers to include smart technology that allows users to schedule charging to avoid peak electricity demand periods. This means any charger you buy will be programmable to take advantage of cheaper night-time electricity rates.

Another thing to consider is whether your charger will work with home solar panels or a domestic electricity storage bank. Even if you don’t have this technology yet, you might invest in it in the future. So, when you’re considering which charger to buy, it’s worth looking at whether it has an option to use surplus ‘green’ energy that could be generated by solar panels or stored in reserve for use at peak periods.

The smartest systems of all should be able to divert energy created by solar panels for charging the car at times when doing so is cheaper than buying power from the grid. Conversely, they’ll also allow it to be sold back to the grid when you don’t need to use it for charging your car.

With these factors in mind, it’s worth buying a charger from a brand that’s truly invested in the future and whose products use the latest technology, because they should take longer to become obsolete. Having a charger that’s capable of being updated over the air or via wi-fi is also a benefit; with many being linked to smartphone apps, the ability to adopt the latest software means they can stay abreast of technological development.

Finally, with many homes having at least two cars, you might want to consider a dual charger that will let you split its output in order to charge up two vehicles at once. However, this does mean a charger with a 7.4kW supply will only charge each car at around 3kW-3.6kW, so, depending on your circumstances, you might be better off with a single charger that can be used to charge either vehicle every other night.

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