Easee One vs Cord Zero: the £150 for connectivity and a cable

The £150 that buys you a cable and a safety net

Two single-phase 7.4kW chargers, both OZEV-approved, both with built-in 4G. The Easee One is £405 — the cheapest mainstream charger on the UK market. The Cord Zero is £555, a £150 premium that buys you a tethered 5-metre cable, dual Wi-Fi + 4G with automatic failover, and the fullest safety suite in this selection.

The shortest version:

• Easee One — the cheapest competent wall-box on sale, untethered, Wi-Fi-first. You carry the cable.
• Cord Zero — tethered, dual-connected, built for driveways where the broadband flickers. Cable stays on the wall.

Is the Cord Zero's £150 premium worth it?

It depends on two things: your broadband and your patience with a cable.

Start with connectivity. The Easee One has a built-in eSIM with a lifetime 4G subscription as a fallback — a proper one, not a trial. That's unusual at £405 and closes much of the gap. But the Cord Zero runs Wi-Fi and 4G in parallel with automatic failover, which is a different class of reliability: the charger never has to notice the router has dropped. On a driveway at the far end of a long garden, or in a stone-walled property where 2.4GHz barely reaches, that matters. In a new-build semi with the router in the hallway, it doesn't.

Then the cable. The Easee One is untethered — neater wall, but you plug your own cable in every time and coil it back into the boot. The Cord Zero ships with a 5-metre tethered cable (an 8-metre version is £625). Tethered is faster day-to-day; untethered is tidier and means one cable can live in the car for public use. It's a taste question, not a right-or-wrong.

The quieter point: both chargers save on install labour through built-in protection. The Easee One's Type B RCD and open-PEN detection usually shave £100–£200 off the bill; the Cord Zero's RCD, PEN detection, SPD, and overvoltage package usually shaves £150–£250. Installed, the real-world gap between the two narrows from £150 to somewhere closer to £100.

Smart tariff behaviour — where both chargers stop short

Neither of these is the right charger for someone running Octopus Agile. The Easee One schedules manually through its app with no direct tariff API. The Cord Zero advertises tariff integration with Octopus Go, Intelligent Go, OVO, British Gas, and EDF, but it's schedule-based — it hits the window, not the half-hour.

If you're on Octopus Go, Intelligent Go, or EDF GoElectric — fixed off-peak windows — either charger handles the job fine. If you want a charger that actively chases half-hourly Agile prices, the Ohme Home Pro at £535 is the pointed alternative; it sits £130 above the Easee and £20 below the Cord, and earns its place on a variable tariff within a year.

Solar buyers should look past both. The Cord Zero's solar support is basic; the Easee One doesn't try. The Zappi GLO at £750 is where surplus-only charging actually works properly.

The app, and what else £555 can buy

The Cord AI app is functional rather than polished — Cord themselves don't pretend otherwise, and the Ohme and Tesla apps feel a generation ahead. The Easee app is mature and clean, if not particularly exciting. For most buyers, either is fine; for someone who cares about the daily interface, neither is the benchmark.

At £555, the Cord Zero also faces the Wallbox Pulsar Max at £536 (smaller, three-phase option, tethered) and the Tesla Wall Connector at £478 (native Tesla integration, 7.3m cable). Both are worth a look if you're spending in that bracket.

The verdict

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want the cheapest way to put a proper charger on a wall
• Your Wi-Fi reaches the driveway reliably
• You're happy plugging in a portable cable each time

Buy the Cord Zero if:

• Your broadband is patchy and 4G matters
• You want a tethered cable that lives on the wall
• The promotional five-year warranty is still running when you buy

On a clean single-phase job where the router reaches and the tariff is fixed, the Easee One is the pragmatic pick — £405 installed for around £700 is hard to argue with. If the driveway is far from the house, or the idea of carrying a cable grates, the Cord Zero's £150 premium buys something real. And if a smart tariff is driving the decision, pause the comparison and look at the Ohme Home Pro vs Easee One page instead — that's the sharper question.