Easee One vs Indra Smart PRO: what the £194 actually buys

The £194 that buys a tethered cable and a CT clamp

On paper this is a £405 charger against a £599 one, and the obvious assumption is that the cheaper one wins. It usually does — but not always, and not by as much as the sticker gap suggests. The Easee One is the lowest-priced mainstream charger on the UK market. The Indra Smart PRO asks £194 more and, on the right install, claws most of that back in bundled hardware.

The shortest version:

• Easee One — the cheapest way to put a proper charger on the wall. Untethered, 1.5 kg, built-in protection that trims install labour. Manual scheduling.
• Indra Smart PRO — a heavier, tethered unit with a surge protection device and solar CT clamp in the box, and direct smart-tariff integration.

What the Indra's £599 actually includes

The Indra's sticker price is misleading in both directions. A surge protection device — which most electricians will quote £100–£150 to fit — is already inside the unit. A CT clamp for solar is in the box; buying one separately for another charger runs £50–£100. Add those and the Indra's effective cost on a clean install lands much closer to the Easee than the headline £194 gap implies.

The Easee One does its own version of this trick with the built-in Type B RCD and open-PEN detection, which takes roughly £100–£200 off install labour. So you're comparing two chargers that both bundle protection the competition doesn't — just different protection, aimed at different installs. If your electrician was going to fit an SPD anyway, the Indra is effectively a £450 charger. If they weren't, it's a £599 one.

Tethered, untethered, and what that means on a wet evening

The Indra ships with a 6-metre tethered cable. The Easee is untethered: you supply a Type 2 cable and plug it in at both ends every time. Neither is objectively better — they're different relationships with the charger. Tethered is quicker at the end of a long day. Untethered keeps the wall tidy and, if you move, the cable goes with you rather than dangling from the old house.

Weight matters here too. The Easee is 1.5 kg; the Indra is around 5 kg. On rendered walls or awkward brick, the lighter unit is a quieter install. Both are IP54, so neither will love being mounted in a fully exposed west-facing spot — site them under an eave if you can.

Tariff automation: the Easee's one real weakness

This is where the Indra earns its keep for a certain buyer. The Smart PRO talks directly to Octopus Intelligent Go, OVO Charge Anytime, Octopus Go and EDF GoElectric — the charger itself schedules against the tariff's cheap windows, including the dynamic extensions Intelligent Go can hand out.

The Easee One doesn't. You set a schedule manually in the Easee app and it runs to that schedule. On a fixed-window tariff like Octopus Go (00:30–05:30) or E.ON Next Drive (00:00–06:00), that's fine — the window never moves. On Octopus Intelligent Go, where the app extends cheap hours based on grid conditions, you'll miss the bonus slots the Indra would catch. Not enormous money over a year, but real.

If tariff automation is central to your thinking and neither charger here quite fits, the Ohme Home Pro comparison with the Easee is the more useful read — the Ohme is the purest answer to that question at £535.

Which to buy

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want the cheapest proper charger at £405, and a flat or fixed-window tariff
• Your install is clean and the built-in Type B RCD will save you labour
• An untethered wall matters — on aesthetics, or because you might take it with you

Buy the Indra Smart PRO if:

• You have, or plan to add, solar panels — the included CT clamp is real money saved
• Your electrician would fit an SPD anyway, making the effective price closer to the Easee
• You want direct smart-tariff scheduling without a separate app dance

For the average single-phase home without solar, on a fixed-window tariff, the Easee is the charger we'd put on the wall — £405, light, protected, done. The Indra is the right answer in a narrower case: solar on the roof, or an installer quoting for an SPD regardless. Outside that, the £194 buys a tethered cable and a nicer app, and those are preferences rather than necessities.