Alpha Max

£264.95 on Amazon for the untethered unit, and on the government's eligible-chargepoint list — the cheapest OZEV-approved charger in this round-up, £97 under the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 and £104 under the EVEC VEC03. Vorsprung's own shop wants £294.95 for the same box and B&Q £299.95, so it holds that position at any of the three prices.

The caveat that decides whether the price means anything, up front: the Alpha Max has no line into any energy supplier. It is not on Octopus's list of chargers that can join Intelligent Octopus Go — a list most of the chargers here are on, running from the Ohme Home Pro at £535 down to that same Sync Energy at £362, which is £97 more than this one and on it. For most buyers that is the hidden cost that turns a cheap charger into an expensive one: a year of off-peak pricing is worth a great deal more than £97.

For a Tesla it doesn't apply, and the reason is worth being exact about. Octopus reaches a Tesla through the car's own API, not through the wallbox: its Intelligent Go setup guide for Tesla owners has you link the car in the Octopus app, and says in plain words that no smart charger device is required. The car does the job the charger can't, so a Tesla household can hang the cheapest listed box on the wall, leave it permanently enabled, never open its app, and charge on the Intelligent Go rate anyway. The catch is the exact shape of the exception. It holds only while the drive contains a car Octopus can talk to directly. Replace the Tesla with an EV that Octopus can only reach through the charger, and the Alpha Max is a timer again.

The warranty is the other thing to settle before paying. Amazon's listing and Vorsprung's own FAQ both say three years. Vorsprung's product page badges five. B&Q, selling the same charger, says one. Three is the number two of its own channels print — get it in writing from whoever takes the money.

Best for: Tesla owners on Intelligent Octopus Go who want an OZEV-listed box on the wall for as little as possible, and have no intention of asking it to think.

Installation

380 × 169 × 151 mm on a dedicated 32A single-phase circuit, with the output adjustable down to 6A where the supply is tight. PEN fault protection is built in, which usually removes the need for a separate earth rod. Over-current, over-voltage, under-voltage and leakage protection are on the list as well — but no RCD type is stated for the leakage device, so assume a Type A still goes in at the consumer unit and price the job that way. The Easee One at £405 is the charger that puts a Type B RCD in the case and takes £100–£200 off the labour for it; the Alpha Max is £140 cheaper and does not. Vorsprung sells the hardware and not the fit, so the labour is a separate bill from a separate trade.

The untethered unit is IP55 and ships with no cable — the socket takes a Type 1 or Type 2 lead, whichever the car came with. The tethered version is IP65, arrives with a 5-metre Type 2 cable attached, and costs £54.50 more at £319.45. That gap is mostly the cable. Both ratings carry a 5 as the water digit, so both units are rated against jets from any direction; what IP65 adds is dust-tightness, not rain resistance, and a retailer's "IP65 weatherproof" badge does not mean the cheaper box leaks. Which is just as well, because the tethered SKU is the one to avoid: at £319.45 it is dearer than the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2, which starts at £302 with a longer cable. Full walkthrough in our home charger install guide.

Tariff compatibility

Intelligent Go is covered above: with a Tesla the charger is a bystander and Octopus schedules the car; without one, the tariff is out of reach, and the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 at £362 is the cheapest way back onto it. Everything else is manual.

Scheduling happens in the charger's own app, and even that is unresolved. The listings sell a free Powerverse app; owners in the Amazon reviews describe pairing the unit with Monta instead, and checking that the charger and the app agree on an OCPP URL. Both can be true of an OCPP 1.6J charger — the protocol is what lets the box be pointed at an open back-end rather than one company's cloud — but it is not a tidy out-of-the-box story, and app pairing is the recurring complaint in the reviews.

On a two-rate tariff like Octopus Go, none of that matters much: set the off-peak window once in the app and leave it alone. On Octopus Agile, where the price moves every half hour, it is the wrong charger — the Ohme Home Pro reads tomorrow's prices and books the cheap slots itself. For the pattern across the market, see our smart-tariff chargers guide.

Price

Amazon is the cheapest of the three channels as things stand — £30 under Vorsprung's own shop, £35 under B&Q. Prices at this end of the market move, so check the figure before committing to it.

Eligible for the £500 OZEV grant if you rent or own a flat, which leaves roughly £165–£365 to pay for the untethered unit installed. The claim is made by an OZEV-approved installer rather than by you, so the electrician has to be an approved one whoever supplied the box.

One thing the range marketing obscures: the Alpha Max is the only Vorsprung charger on the eligible list, where it appears twice, as model codes 20321/BCP-B2N-P and 20320/BCP-A2N-P, residential use only. The cheaper Titan, Cyber, Darkknight and plain Alpha are not on it at all. Buy one of those expecting the grant and there is nothing to claim.

Against the field

The Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 is the comparison that decides it. Socketed, the Sync is £362 — £97 more than the Alpha Max, and for the £97 it adds solar diversion through a CT clamp, IP65 with IK10, and a place on Octopus's Intelligent Go list. Tethered, the argument collapses: the Sync starts at £302 with a 7.5-metre cable, £17 under the Alpha Max's tethered SKU and still on the tariff list. The case for this charger is the untethered price or nothing.

Against the EVEC VEC03 at £369: £104 cheaper untethered and £50 cheaper tethered-for-tethered, and what the EVEC gives back is a cable in the box, a Type A RCD with 6 mA DC leakage detection, and a warranty stated as one number rather than three. Against the Tesla Wall Connector at £478: £213 cheaper, and grant-listed where the Tesla isn't — but the Tesla brings a 7.3-metre cable and a four-year warranty nobody disputes. Against the Ohme Home Pro at £535: £270 cheaper, and the Ohme is what you buy if you want the tariff automation to outlive the car. That is the one thing the Alpha Max cannot promise.