Easee One vs Andersen Quartz: £290 for a prettier wall

The £290 question

The Easee One costs £405. The Andersen Quartz costs £695. Both charge a single-phase UK home at roughly 7 kW. Both have PEN fault detection built in. Both will fill a typical EV battery overnight without complaint. The £290 between them buys no extra speed, no extra kilowatt-hours, no faster morning. It buys something else entirely.

• Easee One — £405, 1.5 kg, untethered, OZEV-approved, three-year warranty. The cheapest mainstream charger on the UK market.
• Andersen Quartz — £695, tethered or untethered, IP65, seven-year warranty, eleven finishes. The Andersen for people who don't need the Andersen A3's hidden cable drum.

What £290 does — and does not — buy

It does not buy a faster charge. The Easee One delivers 7.4 kW; the Quartz, 7.2 kW. The difference is academic — perhaps six minutes over a full battery. It does not buy smarter tariff integration either. The Quartz works with Intelligent Octopus Go and OVO Charge Anytime, which is welcome, but the Easee handles scheduled charging on any fixed off-peak window — Octopus Go, British Gas Electric Drivers, E.ON Next Drive — without fuss. Neither charger chases half-hourly rates on Octopus Agile; buyers on variable tariffs should look at the Ohme Home Pro instead.

What £290 does buy: four extra years of warranty (seven versus three), a jump from IP54 to IP65 weatherproofing, the option of a tethered cable up to 8.5 metres, and a choice of eleven colour finishes including Accoya wood and carbon inserts. If your charger sits on an exposed gable end taking the worst of a Welsh winter, IP65 matters. If your charger faces a sheltered garage wall, IP54 is fine and the premium is cosmetic.

The warranty gap is real. Seven years is serious cover — matched in the catalogue only by the A3 and the Simpson & Partners Home 7. Three years from Easee is standard but unremarkable. Whether that peace of mind is worth £290 depends on how long you plan to stay in the house.

The grant changes the arithmetic

The Easee One is OZEV-approved. The Andersen Quartz is not — its approval has not been confirmed on the current eligible-chargepoint list. For eligible buyers (renters and flat owners), the £500 OZEV grant covers the Easee One's £405 unit price outright and contributes to install costs too. On the Quartz, no grant applies, so the full £695 lands on your card.

That turns a £290 gap into something closer to £790 in total outlay for a grant-eligible buyer — the Easee installed for perhaps £300–£400 out of pocket, the Quartz for around £1,100–£1,500. At that spread, the Quartz needs to be doing something the Easee cannot. For most people, it is not.

Tethered versus untethered

The Easee One is untethered only. You carry your Type 2 cable, plug it in, and coil it away afterwards. The wall stays clean; the routine does not. The Quartz offers both — a tethered version with 5.5 m or 8.5 m cable, or a socket. If you want a cable permanently attached and ready, the Quartz provides that and the Easee does not. The 8.5 m option adds £99 to the Quartz's price, pushing total unit cost to £794, but it reaches driveways and parking arrangements that shorter cables cannot.

For buyers who find the untethered ritual tiresome but still want to spend less, the Wallbox Pulsar Max at £536 offers a tethered option with a 7 m cable — a middle path worth examining in the Wallbox vs Easee comparison.

Solar diversion

The Quartz includes a CT clamp and supports solar diversion through its Adaptive Fuse feature. The Easee One does not divert solar surplus. If you have panels and want to charge from them without a separate diverter, the Quartz handles it — though buyers with serious solar ambitions will get more from a myenergi Zappi GLO at £750, which was built around that exact job.

Which to buy

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want the lowest total installed cost — unit plus labour — of any mainstream charger
• You are OZEV-eligible and want the grant to cover the unit and bite into the install
• You are on a fixed off-peak tariff and need scheduled charging, not tariff optimisation

Buy the Andersen Quartz if:

• You want a seven-year warranty and IP65 weatherproofing on an exposed wall
• You care about the finish on your driveway and want colour, material, and tethered cable options
• You already use Intelligent Octopus Go or OVO Charge Anytime and value native integration

For most buyers — especially those eligible for the OZEV grant — the Easee One is the more rational purchase. It charges at the same speed, installs for less, and leaves £290 in your pocket. The Andersen Quartz is a better-looking, longer-warranted product, and for a visible front-of-house installation it may be worth the difference. But *worth it* and *necessary* are not the same thing. The Easee does the job. The Quartz does the job with nicer clothes on.