Easee One vs EVEC VEC03: £36 between the UK's cheapest smart chargers

£36 apart — and further apart than that suggests

The bottom of the UK smart-charger market is a tight space. The EVEC VEC03 at £369 and the Easee One at £405 are the two cheapest OZEV-approved options you can buy, separated by £36 on the sticker. The real gap is in how they connect, how they install, and how much faith you need to place in your home Wi-Fi.

• EVEC VEC03 — £369, tethered, 5-metre cable, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only. The lowest unit cost in the catalogue.
• Easee One — £405, untethered, lifetime 4G eSIM with Wi-Fi backup. Slightly dearer, considerably smaller on the wall.

The connectivity question matters more than the price

Both chargers rely on an app to schedule charging. Neither has a direct smart-tariff API — neither will chase half-hourly rates on Octopus Agile, and neither appears on the Intelligent Go compatible list. For tariff intelligence, you need the Ohme Home Pro at £535, and that is a different conversation.

What separates these two is what happens when you set a schedule and walk away. The Easee One carries a built-in eSIM with lifetime 4G at no recurring cost. If your router drops at 2 a.m., the charger still talks to its cloud and starts on time. The EVEC VEC03 depends on Wi-Fi — or Bluetooth if you happen to be standing next to it. App reliability is the most common complaint in EVEC owner feedback; missed schedules have been reported when the Wi-Fi connection lapses overnight. On a fixed off-peak tariff like Octopus Go at 8.5p/kWh between 00:30 and 05:30, a single missed window means charging at full daytime rate instead. One such night wipes out the £36 saving and then some.

Installation: where the Easee claws back its premium

Both chargers include built-in protection that reduces the installer's bill — no need for a separate RCD enclosure on the consumer unit. The EVEC VEC03 has a Type A RCD with 6 mA DC leakage detection and PEN fault protection. The Easee One goes further with a Type B RCD and open-PEN detection. Type B compliance is what most installers need to see for a single-phase EV circuit; when it is already inside the charger, the board-side work shrinks. The Easee's integrated protection typically saves £100–£200 on install labour, compared to roughly £100 for the EVEC's Type A setup. That difference alone can erase the £36 unit-price gap — and sometimes reverse it.

The Easee One is also strikingly small: 1.5 kg, about the size of a hardback book. The EVEC VEC03 weighs 5.01 kg and sits larger on the wall, though it is still a compact unit by the standards of the market. If wall aesthetics matter — and for a front-of-house installation they often do — the Easee is the less conspicuous object.

Tethered vs untethered: the daily trade-off

The EVEC VEC03 comes with a 5-metre Type 2 cable permanently attached. You pull it out, plug in, walk away. No rummaging in the boot. The downside: 5 metres is the shortest tethered cable in our charger catalogue, and when the car is not home, the cable hangs or coils on the wall.

The Easee One is untethered — a Type 2 socket, no cable included. You supply your own, which means any length you like (useful for awkward driveways), but you carry it every time. For drivers who charge daily in the same spot, that is a minor annoyance. For households sharing a charger between two cars with different parking positions, the flexibility is worth it.

The OZEV grant and these two chargers

Both are OZEV-approved. The £500 grant — available to renters and flat owners — covers the EVEC VEC03's £369 price outright and puts the remainder toward installation. It does the same arithmetic with the Easee One's £405. For grant-eligible buyers, the unit cost of either charger is effectively absorbed, making install quality and long-term reliability the deciding factors rather than sticker price.

Which to buy

Buy the Easee One if you:

• Want scheduling that works regardless of your Wi-Fi
• Prefer a small, light, untethered unit on the wall
• Value the install savings from a built-in Type B RCD

Buy the EVEC VEC03 if you:

• Want the lowest possible unit price and a cable always ready to go
• Have strong, stable Wi-Fi at the charger location
• Are grant-eligible and want the cheapest total outlay

For most buyers, the Easee One is the sounder £36 to spend. The 4G fallback alone justifies it — a charger that cannot reliably connect is a charger that cannot reliably schedule, and scheduling is the entire point of a smart unit. The EVEC VEC03 is not a bad product, but it asks more of your home network than it should. If your budget is fixed at the lowest possible number and your Wi-Fi is robust, the EVEC does the job. Everyone else should spend the extra £36 and stop thinking about it. If neither charger's lack of tariff integration sits well, the Ohme Home Pro comparison is the next page worth reading.