Easee One vs GivEnergy EV Charger: cheapest mount or battery link?

One is the cheapest way to get charging; the other only makes sense with a battery

These two land close on price — the Easee One at £405, the GivEnergy EV Charger at £478 — but they're solving different problems. The Easee is the cheapest mainstream charger on the UK market, built around a light, untethered unit that keeps installs quick. The GivEnergy exists to link the car to a home battery. If you don't own a battery, most of what you're paying £73 extra for is inert.

The shortest version:

• Easee One — the budget default. £405, 1.5 kg, built-in 4G, untethered. Fine on any flat-rate tariff.
• GivEnergy EV Charger — the battery companion. Tethered, IP65, pulls from stored energy. Specialist-only.

What the GivEnergy does that nothing else does

Most chargers with "solar" in the pitch can only divert live, sunlit generation into the car. The GivEnergy can also pull from a home battery — its own or a compatible third-party unit — which means you can fill the battery on a cheap overnight rate like Octopus Go or Octopus Intelligent Go and then feed the car during the day without touching the grid. That's a real, quantifiable behaviour, and it's the GivEnergy's entire reason for being.

The catch is the size of the eligible audience. If you don't have a home battery, you're buying a £478 tethered charger with a basic app, Wi-Fi-only connectivity, and schedule-based tariff integration. At that price, the Tesla Wall Connector matches it with a better app and a 7.3-metre cable, and the Ohme Home Pro beats it on smart-tariff behaviour for £57 more. The GivEnergy is a specialist tool priced like a generalist, and it only pays off if the specialism matches your house.

Where the Easee earns its £405

The Easee is the lightest charger in this selection by a long way — 1.5 kg, versus roughly 4.5 kg for the GivEnergy — and it ships with Type B RCD and open-PEN detection built in. That matters at install, not on the spec sheet: most installers charge £100–£200 less when they don't have to fit external protection. A clean Easee install tends to land near £700 all-in. The GivEnergy, with standard protection added externally, sits closer to the top of the £400–£600 install band.

The built-in eSIM is the other quiet advantage. Lifetime 4G at no extra cost means the Easee keeps running schedules if your home Wi-Fi drops — which it will, at some point, usually on the night you needed a full battery. The GivEnergy is Wi-Fi only; if the router falls over, the charger falls over with it.

What the Easee can't do: it has no live tariff API, no solar divert, and no battery drawdown. Scheduling is manual. That's fine on Octopus Go, where off-peak is a fixed 00:30–05:30 window you set once and forget. On Octopus Agile, where rates move every half hour, the Easee can't chase them — the Ohme Home Pro can, and for that buyer it's the right answer.

The tethered-versus-untethered question

One honest point in the GivEnergy's favour for non-battery buyers: it's tethered. 5 metres of cable, permanently attached, ready to plug in. The Easee is untethered, which means a tidier wall but a cable you carry from boot to socket each time. If that friction bothers you, the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 is a tethered unit at £362 — cheaper than both — and the Tesla Wall Connector tethered runs level with the GivEnergy on price with a notably better app.

The verdict

Buy the Easee One if:

• You're on a fixed off-peak tariff and want the cheapest competent charger on the wall
• You value low install cost and want the 4G backup
• You don't have a home battery

Buy the GivEnergy EV Charger if:

• You own (or plan to own) a GivEnergy or compatible home battery
• You want one app managing battery, solar, and EV charging together
• You specifically need a tethered unit with IP65 weatherproofing

For almost everyone, the Easee wins this — it's £73 cheaper, easier to install, and backed by 4G the GivEnergy doesn't have. The GivEnergy is worth buying, but only for the narrow slice of buyers with a battery to feed it from. If that's you, look at the Zappi GLO vs GivEnergy comparison before deciding — the Zappi is the other serious contender in that corner of the market.