Andersen A3 vs CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3: Kerb appeal or car-park engineering

A design piece versus an infrastructure unit

These two occupy the same price tier — £995 for the Andersen A3, £1,086 for the CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 — and share almost nothing else. The Andersen is a single-phase charger built to look good on the front of a house. The CTEK is a three-phase unit engineered to the standards of a commercial car park, bolted to a domestic wall. The £91 gap is incidental. The real question is which problem you are paying to solve.

• Andersen A3 — 247 finish combinations, hidden cable, seven-year warranty. A charger you choose because visitors will see it.
• CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 — 22kW three-phase native, OCPP 2.0.1, MID-approved meter, built-in Type B RCD. A charger you choose because you have the supply to use it.

The three-phase question decides everything

Fewer than 5% of UK homes have a three-phase supply. If yours is one of them, the CTEK delivers up to 22kW — roughly three times the Andersen's 7.4kW — meaning a typical 60kWh battery fills in under three hours rather than eight. That is a material difference for drivers who need rapid turnaround at home, and the CTEK's built-in Type B RCD saves a separate purchase that can run £150–£250 on other installs.

If your home is single-phase — and statistically it is — both chargers cap at ~7.4kW, and the CTEK becomes an expensive box carrying hardware it cannot exercise. Its install costs run £900–£1,300 even on single-phase, against £400–£600 for the Andersen. Total outlay on single-phase: roughly £1,400–£1,600 for the Andersen, £1,986–£2,386 for the CTEK. That gap is hard to rationalise when the electrons arrive at the same rate.

For single-phase homes wanting three-phase readiness at a lower price, the Zaptec Go 2 at £500 or the Wallbox Pulsar Max at £536 both support 22kW three-phase and cost a fraction of the CTEK.

Smart tariff support — or the lack of it

The Andersen's app handles scheduled charging and integrates with Intelligent Octopus Go and OVO Charge Anytime. Functional, not dazzling — but enough for most fixed-window tariffs like Octopus Go at 8.5p/kWh between 00:30 and 05:30.

The CTEK has no first-party app for tariff scheduling at all. It speaks OCPP 1.6-J and 2.0.1, which means you can bolt on a back-end like Monta — but that is another layer of configuration, another account, and no direct integration with Intelligent Go or OVO. For anyone who wants to plug in and let the charger chase cheap rates, this is a meaningful absence. The Ohme Home Pro at £535 does this out of the box, for less than half the CTEK's unit price.

If you are drawn to the CTEK's open-protocol approach and want to compare it against another three-phase-capable unit with simpler software, the Andersen A3 vs Zaptec Go 2 page covers adjacent ground.

What £995 buys that £1,086 does not

The Andersen's argument is almost entirely aesthetic — and it is a good one. Anodised aluminium front, 247 colour and finish combinations including wood inlays, and a hidden cable that retracts inside the unit. No other domestic charger on the UK market does this. The seven-year warranty is the longest available, two years more than the CTEK's five. At 7.5kg it mounts neatly; the CTEK weighs up to 24kg and has the dimensions to match.

The trade-off: the Andersen's cable is 5.5 metres with no longer option, and it connects via Wi-Fi only — no Ethernet, no 4G fallback. The CTEK offers dual Ethernet and optional 4G. For a home charger on a domestic Wi-Fi network, this rarely matters. For a unit in an outbuilding at the edge of router range, it might.

Both chargers are OZEV-approved. Eligible renters and flat owners can claim the £500 grant, which brings the Andersen to £495 and the CTEK to £586 before installation.

The verdict

Buy the Andersen A3 if:

• Your home is single-phase and the charger will be visible from the street or front drive
• You value a seven-year warranty and materials that outlast plastic housings
• You want basic smart-tariff scheduling without third-party middleware

Buy the CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 if:

• You have a three-phase supply and need 22kW home charging
• You want OCPP 2.0.1 and open-protocol flexibility for future back-end changes
• You need a built-in MID meter and Type B RCD for simplified installation

For most buyers landing on this page — single-phase, one car, visible driveway — the Andersen is the more coherent purchase. It costs £91 less, installs for hundreds less, and does the one thing no rival attempts: it looks like it belongs on the house. The CTEK is a fine piece of engineering aimed at a narrow audience. If you are not in that audience, you are overpaying for capability you will never switch on.