Easee One vs NexBlue Point 2

The £45 between a known name and a longer bet

Two untethered, 7.4kW chargers with lifetime 4G built in. The Easee One costs £489, the NexBlue Point 2 costs £534. Both mount light — 1.5 kg and 2.1 kg respectively — and both leave you carrying your own Type 2 cable. The surface similarities are unusual in a market where most head-to-heads involve a tethered charger squaring off against an untethered one, or a 7kW unit against a 22kW option. Here the question is narrower and more interesting: what does that extra £45 buy, and do you trust it?

• Easee One — the proven install. Built-in RCD and open-PEN detection trim the electrician's bill. No tariff automation; scheduling is manual.
• NexBlue Point 2 — the feature-dense newcomer. V2G-ready hardware, EcoPilot tariff integration, five-year warranty. Brand track record is still being written.

What the Easee's install advantage is worth

The Easee One's party trick has always been what it saves after you buy it. A built-in Type B RCD and open-PEN detection mean your electrician doesn't need to supply or fit external protection — a saving that typically lands between £100 and £200 depending on the consumer unit. At £489 for the hardware, total cost to the wall can undercut chargers that look cheaper on paper.

The NexBlue includes a CT clamp in the box — useful for dynamic load balancing and solar surplus — but the electrical protection story is less tidy. Depending on your board, the installer may still need to add an external RCD. That narrows the real-world price gap, and in some installs erases it. If your electrician quotes both chargers, compare the fitted figures, not the box prices.

Tariff smarts and the case for EcoPilot

This is where the NexBlue earns its premium. The Easee One lets you set a charge schedule in the app — pick a start time, pick a stop time, done. That works fine on a fixed-window tariff like Octopus Go, where you set 00:30–05:30 and forget it. But it cannot respond to shifting rates. On Octopus Agile, where the price changes every thirty minutes, a static schedule leaves money on the table.

The NexBlue's EcoPilot does what the Easee cannot: it reads the tariff and chases the cheapest slots. It supports Intelligent Go, Agile, and other time-of-use tariffs directly. If you are on Agile and charging 250 kWh a month, the difference between a dumb schedule and half-hourly optimisation is typically £5–£10 a month — enough to recover that £45 gap inside a quarter.

If smart-tariff integration is the priority and you'd rather have a more established name behind it, the Ohme Home Pro at £539 does tariff automation with a longer UK track record. The comparison between those two is covered in the Ohme Home Pro vs NexBlue Point 2 piece.

V2G readiness — paying now for a future that hasn't arrived

The NexBlue Point 2 supports ISO 15118 and OCPP 2.0.1, and its hardware is rated for bi-directional energy flow. In plain terms: when vehicle-to-grid becomes commercially available in the UK, the NexBlue should handle it without a hardware swap. The Easee One will not.

Whether that matters depends on your time horizon. V2G is not commercially live for domestic customers on most UK tariffs today. The only other sub-£650 charger making the same claim is the Zaptec Go 2 at £638, and the dedicated bi-directional flagship — the Wallbox Quasar 2 — sits at £6,100. The NexBlue's V2G readiness at £534 is unusually cheap insurance, but it is insurance against a future that may be two years away or five.

Warranty and brand maturity

The NexBlue offers five years. The Easee offers three. On paper, the NexBlue wins. In practice, a warranty is only as good as the company honouring it. Easee has been selling in the UK since 2020 and has a broad installer network. NexBlue is newer, with fewer units in the field and a smaller support footprint. Neither charger has reported widespread faults, but the Easee's failure modes are at least documented in installer forums. The NexBlue's are not — because there hasn't been enough time.

This is the honest tension in the comparison. The NexBlue's spec sheet is superior in almost every line. The question is whether you are buying a charger or buying a relationship with a company you'll need to call in year four.

The verdict

Buy the Easee One if:

• Your consumer unit is awkward and you want the cheapest fitted price
• You are on a fixed-window tariff and manual scheduling is fine
• You prefer a brand with several years of UK install data behind it

Buy the NexBlue Point 2 if:

• You are on Octopus Agile or another variable tariff and want automated optimisation
• V2G readiness matters to you — even if the payoff is a few years out
• The five-year warranty offsets the thinner track record in your mind

For most buyers on a smart tariff, the NexBlue Point 2 is the stronger proposition at £534. It does more, guarantees longer, and costs only £45 extra. The caveat is brand maturity — and it is a real one. If that keeps you awake, the Easee One at £489 is a charger nobody regrets buying. It just doesn't do as much.