Easee One vs EVEC VEC03

£140 and a question of shelf life

The Easee One costs £489. The EVEC VEC03 costs £349. Both are 7.4 kW, single-phase, OZEV-approved, and both pack built-in electrical protection that trims your install bill. On paper the gap is £140 and not much else. In practice, one charger has a product roadmap; the other has a clearance banner on its own manufacturer's website.

• Easee One — £489. Untethered, 1.5 kg, lifetime 4G via built-in eSIM. The install-cost argument.
• EVEC VEC03 — £349. Tethered, 5-metre cable, OCPP 1.6J. The price argument — while stock lasts.

What the EVEC's £349 buys — and what it doesn't

At £349 the VEC03 is among the cheapest smart chargers that still qualify for the £500 OZEV grant. Eligible renters and flat owners would see the grant cover the unit outright and chip into the install. It has a Type A RCD with DC leakage detection and PEN fault protection built in, so a typical installation comes in around £350–£550 — comparable to the Easee, and cheaper than chargers that need an external enclosure.

The catch is everything after the wall. EVEC's app is the persistent weak point: scheduled charging has been reported as intermittent, and there is no 4G fallback — if your Wi-Fi drops, the charger loses its brains. There is no direct hook into any UK smart tariff, either. On Octopus Go you can set a manual schedule and hope the app holds it. On Octopus Agile, where rates shift every half hour, you are out of luck entirely.

Then there is the discontinuation. EVEC has replaced the VEC03 with its vecGO 2.0. What remains is run-out stock. That does not make the hardware worse today, but it raises an obvious question about firmware updates, spare parts, and warranty service in year two or three. The three-year parts-and-labour warranty with a 48-hour callout pledge is generous on paper — whether EVEC honours it for a product it no longer sells is a bet you are making with the £140 you saved.

Where the Easee One's £140 goes

The Easee is not a sophisticated smart charger. Like the VEC03, it has no tariff API — scheduling is manual, and on a variable tariff it cannot optimise. If smart-tariff integration matters, both of these lose to the Ohme Home Pro at £539, which is covered in the Ohme vs Easee comparison.

What the Easee does better than almost anything else is arrive on a wall cheaply and stay connected. At 1.5 kg it is the lightest charger in the UK market by a wide margin — the VEC03 weighs 5.01 kg — which means less mounting hardware and less time on a ladder. Its built-in eSIM provides lifetime 4G at no ongoing cost, so schedules run even when the router is off. That connectivity advantage is not trivial: a charger that forgets its overnight schedule because the Wi-Fi dropped out is a charger that charges at peak rate.

Being untethered is a matter of taste. No cable dangling on the wall looks tidier; plugging in every evening is marginally less convenient. You supply your own Type 2 cable, which adds cost if you do not already own one — budget £50–£100 for a decent 5-metre lead.

The Easee's IP54 rating is the lowest in this pair (the VEC03 claims IP55, though EVEC's own documentation is inconsistent). For a sheltered driveway, IP54 is adequate. For an exposed coastal wall, it is worth a pause.

Grant arithmetic for flat owners and renters

Both chargers are OZEV-approved. The £500 grant applies to eligible renters and flat owners only. For the VEC03 at £349, the grant covers the unit price entirely and puts the remainder towards installation. For the Easee at £489, the grant leaves just a sliver of the hardware cost exposed. Either way, the out-of-pocket total lands well under £500 once the grant is applied — making the £140 difference between the two feel smaller than it does at sticker price.

If you are not grant-eligible, the full £140 gap stands, and the VEC03's appeal is obvious: it is the second-cheapest OZEV-approved charger on our cheapest EV chargers list, behind only the Vorsprung Alpha Max at £265.

The verdict

Buy the EVEC VEC03 if:

• Price is the deciding factor and you charge on a flat-rate tariff
• You want a tethered cable and do not want to carry your own
• You are comfortable buying a discontinued product with uncertain long-term software support

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want a charger with built-in 4G so schedules survive a Wi-Fi outage
• A lighter, faster install matters — especially on an awkward consumer unit
• You prefer a product still in active production with ongoing firmware updates

For a buyer on a simple off-peak tariff like Octopus Go or EDF GoElectric, who just needs a timer set once and left alone, the Easee One is the safer £140 to spend. Its 4G keeps the schedule honest, its install runs lean, and it will still be getting updates when the VEC03's product page redirects to its replacement. The VEC03 is not a bad charger — it is a cheap one with an expiry date. Whether that bothers you depends on how long you plan to keep it on the wall.