Easee One vs Enphase IQ EV Charger 2

£561 and an ecosystem between them

The Easee One costs £489. The Enphase IQ EV Charger 2 costs £1,050. That £561 gap is wide enough to be the entire install cost of the cheaper unit — which rather frames the question. These two chargers are not competitors in the usual sense. They serve different buyers with different driveways, different roofs, and different electrical cupboards.

• Easee One — a 1.5 kg wall puck with built-in protection, lifetime 4G, and the lowest install labour bill in the catalogue. No solar awareness. No tariff API. Just a reliable, light, untethered socket.
• Enphase IQ EV Charger 2 — a 11 kg tethered unit built to be the fourth appliance in an Enphase energy system. Solar-surplus charging from 1.38 kW, AI source selection across PV, battery and grid, MID-certified metering. Expensive in isolation; coherent inside the ecosystem.

The Enphase tax — and who should pay it

At £1,050 for the charger alone, plus £900–£1,300 for a typical install, the Enphase IQ EV Charger 2 lands somewhere around £1,950–£2,350 on the wall. The Easee One, at £489 plus £400–£600 install, comes in at £889–£1,089. That is roughly a thousand pounds of daylight.

The Enphase earns that gap back only one way: if you already own Enphase IQ microinverters and, ideally, an IQ Battery. In that setup, the charger talks to the gateway, the gateway talks to the panels and the battery, and the whole lot appears in a single app. Solar surplus as low as 1.38 kW can trickle into the car in 1A increments, adjusting every thirty seconds. The MID-certified meter gives you auditable data on exactly what came from the roof and what came from the grid. If you care about that level of accounting — and some solar owners do — the Enphase delivers it with unusual precision.

Without the rest of the Enphase stack, though, none of that matters. The charger still works, but it becomes a £1,050 7.4 kW box with a nice cable and no particular trick. For solar diversion without an Enphase system, the myenergi Zappi GLO does it for £599 and works with any inverter — our solar charger guide covers the detail.

Where the Easee One fits — and where it doesn't

The Easee's pitch is not glamorous. It is the lightest charger on the market at 1.5 kg, it has a built-in Type B RCD and open-PEN detection — saving roughly £100–£200 off the electrician's bill — and it carries a lifetime 4G eSIM so it can run schedules even where Wi-Fi does not reach the drive. For a straightforward single-phase home that wants a reliable socket on the wall, it is hard to fault at £489.

Its weaknesses are just as plain. It is untethered, so you carry the cable and plug in each time. It has no direct tariff API — scheduling is manual, set in the Easee app. On a variable tariff like Octopus Agile, where rates shift every thirty minutes, it cannot chase the cheapest slots the way the Ohme Home Pro can. On a fixed off-peak window like Octopus Go, manual scheduling is fine and the Easee does the job. But if smart-tariff optimisation matters to you, the Ohme Home Pro at £539 — just £50 more — is the better tool. The Ohme vs Easee comparison lays that out.

It is also worth noting the Easee One is OZEV-approved. For eligible renters and flat owners, the £500 grant covers the £489 unit outright and contributes toward install costs too. The Enphase's OZEV status is not confirmed on the current list — a meaningful risk if the grant is part of your budget.

IP rating, warranty, build

The Enphase is the sturdier object. IP55 and IK10 — impact-rated — with a five-year warranty and an operating range of –40°C to +55°C. The Easee carries IP54 and a three-year warranty. For a sheltered UK driveway, IP54 is adequate; for a fully exposed coastal wall, the Enphase's extra rating and two additional warranty years offer more comfort. Whether that comfort is worth a thousand pounds is another matter.

The verdict

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want a cheap, light, quick install with built-in protection and 4G backup
• You charge on a fixed off-peak tariff and manual scheduling is fine
• You are OZEV-eligible and want the £500 grant to cover the unit and chip into the install

Buy the Enphase IQ EV Charger 2 if:

• You already run Enphase microinverters and an IQ Battery and want single-app control
• You value MID-certified metering and granular solar-surplus tracking
• You are committed to the Enphase ecosystem and treat the charger as a system component, not a standalone buy

For the large majority of UK buyers — those without an Enphase roof — the Easee One is the charger to fit. It is £561 cheaper, simpler to install, and does the core job without fuss. The Enphase is a fine piece of hardware inside its own world. Outside it, the price makes no sense.