EO Mini Pro 3 vs Rolec EVO

£356 versus £523 — and the gap is wider than it looks

The EO Mini Pro 3 costs £523. The Rolec EVO costs £356. That is £167 on the sticker — but once you factor in what each charger needs at install, the real difference grows.

• EO Mini Pro 3 — the charger you buy because nothing else physically fits. 215 × 140 × 100 mm, tethered, 7.2kW, three-year warranty.
• Rolec EVO — the charger you buy because the maths makes sense. £356, untethered, 7.4kW, five-year warranty, built-in RCD and PME fault detection.

What the Rolec EVO saves you at the consumer unit

The Rolec EVO has built-in Type A RCD, 6mA DC protection, surge protection, and PME/PEN fault detection. Most chargers require some or all of those as separate components, fitted by the electrician at your distribution board. That work typically adds £100–£250 to the install bill. The EO Mini Pro 3 does not include equivalent built-in protection.

Take the midpoint — £175 saved on install. Add it to the £167 unit-price gap and the Rolec is effectively £342 cheaper across the whole job. That is not a rounding error. It is a second charger's worth of money.

Both chargers quote a standard install range of £400–£600, but the Rolec's built-in protection pulls its installed total toward the lower end of that band. If you are grant-eligible (renters and flat owners), the £500 OZEV grant covers the Rolec's £356 unit price outright and chips into the install costs too.

When the EO Mini Pro 3 earns its premium

Two scenarios, and only two.

Tight walls. At 215 × 140 mm, the EO Mini Pro 3 is roughly A5-sized — the smallest mainstream charger sold in the UK. The Rolec EVO is 260 × 260 mm, nearly twice the face area. If you are mounting beside a narrow garage doorway, in a recessed alcove, or on a pillar between two parking spaces, the EO may be the only unit that fits. That is a legitimate, load-bearing reason to pay more.

British Gas households. The Hive Power+ variant of the EO Mini Pro 3 credits back 25% of charging costs on the British Gas EV Power tariff. No other charger offers that structural discount inside the British Gas ecosystem. Over a year of typical home charging, 25% back on a 9p/kWh off-peak rate adds up. Outside British Gas, this advantage disappears entirely.

If neither of those applies to you, the EO's case thins quickly. Its 7.2kW output is fractionally slower than the Rolec's 7.4kW — trivial on a nightly charge, but you are paying more for less power. Its three-year warranty is two years shorter. And EO is in the process of retiring its own app and migrating users to ev.energy, a platform transition that introduces uncertainty about long-term software support.

Solar, scheduling, and connectivity

Both chargers include a CT clamp for solar diversion. The Rolec offers Eco and Eco+ modes — the latter restricting charging to surplus generation only — which gives slightly more granular control than the EO's basic solar diversion. Neither approaches the myenergi Zappi GLO's depth of solar integration, but for households with a modest array wanting to use excess generation, both do the job.

For tariff scheduling, both support timed charging through their respective apps. Set either to charge during Octopus Go's 00:30–05:30 window at 8.5p/kWh, or EDF GoElectric's 23:00–06:00 slot at 6.99p/kWh, and you are sorted. Neither charger offers the half-hourly tariff optimisation of the Ohme Home Pro — if Octopus Agile is your tariff, look there instead.

Connectivity is close. The Rolec offers Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and Ethernet. The EO matches with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet, adding an optional 4G module for locations where wireless signal is poor. That 4G option is the EO's one connectivity advantage — useful if your charger is at the far end of a long drive with no Wi-Fi reach and no Ethernet run.

The verdict

Buy the EO Mini Pro 3 if:

• Your mounting location demands a charger no larger than 215 × 140 mm
• You are on British Gas Hive Power+ and want the 25% charging cashback
• You need 4G cellular connectivity because Wi-Fi and Ethernet cannot reach

Buy the Rolec EVO if:

• You want the lowest total installed cost — unit price plus electrical work
• A five-year warranty matters more than a three-year one
• You are comfortable with an untethered socket and your own Type 2 cable

For the majority of buyers, the Rolec EVO is the charger to fit. It costs £167 less, saves a further £100–£250 on install protection, carries a longer warranty, and comes from a manufacturer with a decade of commercial charging behind it. The app is still maturing — that is worth knowing — but the hardware and the economics are sound. The EO Mini Pro 3 exists for the wall that will not accept anything else. If your wall is more accommodating, so is the Rolec's price.