Easee One vs CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3: £681 apart — is three-phase worth it?

A £681 gap that hinges on your electricity supply

These two chargers have almost nothing in common except a Type 2 socket and an IP54 rating. The Easee One costs £405 and weighs 1.5 kg — a compact, single-phase unit built to be the cheapest credible option on a UK wall. The CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 costs £1,086, weighs up to 24 kg, and arrives with three-phase 22kW capability, OCPP 2.0.1, a MID-approved energy meter, and the general demeanour of something bolted to the wall of a multi-storey car park.

• Easee One — £405, single-phase 7.4kW, built-in eSIM, integrated Type B RCD. The budget pick for single-phase homes.
• CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 — £1,086, up to 22kW on three-phase, OCPP and ISO 15118 ready, five-year warranty. The pick for three-phase homes that want open-protocol hardware.

Why most buyers should stop at £405

If your home has a standard single-phase supply — and the large majority of UK homes do — both chargers deliver the same ~7.4kW to your car. The CTEK's 22kW three-phase circuitry sits idle. Its MID-approved meter and Eichrecht compliance are designed for commercial billing scenarios that a domestic driveway does not need. Its OCPP stack is impressive on paper but irrelevant if you just want to plug in at 23:00 and wake up charged.

The Easee One, meanwhile, ships with a built-in Type B RCD and open-PEN detection. That typically saves £100–£200 on install labour because the electrician does not need to fit a separate device in the consumer unit. With install running £400–£600, a clean single-phase Easee job can land around £700 all-in. The CTEK quotes £900–£1,300 for installation — before the unit itself. Total installed cost could easily exceed £2,000.

Both are OZEV-approved. For the Easee One at £405, the £500 grant covers the unit outright and chips into the install. For the CTEK, it takes the unit price down to £586 — still £181 more than the Easee before you touch the install bill.

When the CTEK earns its price

Three-phase supply changes the arithmetic. On three phases, the CTEK delivers 22kW — roughly three times the Easee's output. A 60 kWh battery goes from empty to full in under three hours rather than eight. If you drive high mileage, run two EVs, or simply have the supply and want to use it, that speed matters.

The CTEK also speaks OCPP 1.6-J and 2.0.1, which means it is not locked to a single vendor back-end. You can run it through Monta, Charge Portal, or any compliant platform. ISO 15118 plug-and-charge support is forward-looking — few UK cars use it today, but it is the direction of travel. And the five-year warranty beats the Easee's three.

The catch: the CTEK has no first-party smart-tariff integration. No Octopus app link, no OVO Charge Anytime support. Scheduling goes through a third-party OCPP app. If you want direct Intelligent Octopus Go integration or half-hourly optimisation on Octopus Agile, the CTEK cannot do it. The Ohme Home Pro at £535 handles that natively, and even the Easee's own app can set a fixed off-peak schedule for something like Octopus Go.

For three-phase buyers who also want tariff intelligence, the Zaptec Go 2 at £500 is worth a look — it supports three-phase 22kW at less than half the CTEK's price, though with a different feature set.

The Easee One's limits, plainly stated

The Easee is cheap for good reasons, and some of those reasons are compromises. It is untethered — you carry your own cable and plug it in every session. Its IP54 rating is the lowest in the mainstream field. Its scheduling is manual; there is no tariff API to chase variable rates. And it is single-phase only, full stop.

For buyers who want smart-tariff automation without spending CTEK money, the comparison to consider is Ohme Home Pro vs Easee One. The Ohme costs £535 — £130 more — and talks directly to Octopus and OVO. That £130 usually pays for itself within a year on a variable tariff.

Which to buy

Buy the Easee One if:

• Your home is single-phase — which it almost certainly is
• You want the lowest total installed cost for a mainstream smart charger
• You are on a fixed off-peak tariff like Octopus Go and a manual schedule is fine

Buy the CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 if:

• You have a three-phase supply and want 22kW charging at home
• You need OCPP compatibility for a third-party management platform
• You value the five-year warranty and commercial-grade metering

For single-phase homes — the overwhelming majority — the Easee One at £405 is the straightforward answer. The CTEK is a good piece of hardware aimed at a narrow audience. If you are not in that audience, the £681 premium buys capability your house cannot deliver.