Easee One vs VCHRGD Seven Pro: £27 for a cable and a lot more kit

The £27 question

Two single-phase 7.4kW chargers, £27 apart, aimed at completely different buyers. The Easee One is £405, untethered, 1.5 kg on the wall, and runs its own 4G out of the box. The VCHRGD Seven Pro is £432 with a 7.5-metre tethered cable, solar modes, RFID, and a cable lock. Same power, same OZEV approval, wildly different philosophies.

The shortest version:

• Easee One — the minimalist. Cheapest mainstream charger on the UK market, cleanest wall, cable lives in your boot.
• VCHRGD Seven Pro — the maximalist. Tethered lead, solar, load balancing, tariff integration. £27 more.

What £27 actually buys you

On paper, £27 is nothing — a week's off-peak electricity on Octopus Intelligent Go. What it buys here is a different product category. The VCHRGD Seven Pro comes tethered with a 7.5-metre lead (longer than the Tesla Wall Connector's 7.3 m), a CT clamp for solar and load balancing, two RFID cards, a cable lock, and OCPP 1.6J for third-party energy platforms. Solar Only mode will charge from roof surplus alone; Solar Export blends grid and solar.

The Easee One ships with none of that. What it does bring, which the VCHRGD doesn't, is a built-in eSIM with lifetime 4G at no ongoing cost — useful if your router struggles to reach the driveway — plus integrated Type B RCD and open-PEN detection that typically knock £100–£200 off install labour. On a clean job, installed cost lands close to £700. That's a meaningful saving the spec sheet doesn't advertise.

So the £27 isn't £27. Adjusted for install, the Easee can come in cheaper still; adjusted for what's in the box, the VCHRGD delivers more hardware per pound than anything else near this price.

Tethered versus untethered, honestly

This is the decision. Tethered means the cable lives on the wall — grab, plug in, walk away. Tidier if you charge every night and hate fumbling with a boot-stored cable in the rain. The VCHRGD Seven Pro's 7.5 metres reaches most driveway-to-port configurations without complaint.

Untethered means the wall stays clean when the car's away and the cable you carry works at any public Type 2 point. The Easee One at 1.5 kg is the lightest mount in this selection by a clear margin — it looks almost incidental on a brick wall. The trade is convenience: every session starts with unspooling a cable from the boot.

Neither is objectively better. It's a preference, and the £27 barely registers next to which ritual you'd rather live with for the next decade.

Smart tariffs and solar

The VCHRGD Seven Pro lists direct integration with Octopus Intelligent Go, meaning the charger itself can align sessions with the tariff's half-hourly cheap windows. The Easee One has no tariff API — you set schedules manually against the fixed windows of Octopus Go (00:30–05:30) or E.ON Next Drive (00:00–06:00). For a fixed-window tariff, manual is fine. For anything dynamic, manual is lossy.

Solar matters more. If you have panels and want surplus-from-roof charging, the Seven Pro is the answer in this pair — CT clamp included, Solar Only mode included. The Easee doesn't pretend to play in that market. Buyers who care most about solar diversion should also look at the Ohme Home Pro vs Zappi GLO comparison; the myenergi Zappi GLO is the segment benchmark for a reason.

The verdict

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want the lowest total installed cost — the built-in protection trims labour.
• Your tariff is fixed-window (Octopus Go, E.ON Next Drive) and manual scheduling is enough.
• You'd rather keep the wall bare when the car's out.

Buy the VCHRGD Seven Pro if:

• You want a tethered 7.5-metre cable ready to grab.
• You have solar panels and want surplus charging built in.
• You're on Octopus Intelligent Go and want native integration.

On balance, the VCHRGD Seven Pro is the more charger for the money — there's more in the box than anything at this price. But the Easee One is the cleaner answer for the buyer who just wants a minimal, cheap, competent 7.4kW box on the wall, and whose tariff has a fixed off-peak window. Pick the ritual. The £27 will sort itself out.