EVEC VEC03 vs Andersen Quartz: £326 for a prettier wall

£326 buys you a finish and a longer warranty — not more electricity

The EVEC VEC03 at £369 and the Andersen Quartz at £695 both push roughly 7kW into a Tesla on a single-phase supply. Same plug. Same overnight result. The £326 gap is not about kilowatts — it is about how much you care about what the charger looks like on your wall, how long its warranty runs, and whether it can talk to your energy supplier without help.

• EVEC VEC03 — £369, OZEV-approved, built-in RCD, no smart-tariff integration. The budget pick that does the electrical work and little else.
• Andersen Quartz — £695, eleven finishes, seven-year warranty, Intelligent Octopus Go and OVO Charge Anytime integration. The charger for people who notice their driveway.

What the Andersen Quartz's £326 actually buys

Four extra years of warranty. That is the headline. The EVEC's three years are adequate; Andersen's seven are unusual — matched in this price range only by the Andersen A3 and the Simpson & Partners Home 7. If you intend to stay in the house for a decade, the longer cover has real value. If you are likely to move within five years, it matters less than you think.

Then there is the finish. Eleven standard colours, optional Accoya and carbon inserts — the Quartz is designed to sit on a front wall without looking like an electrical junction box. The EVEC VEC03 is a white rectangle. Whether that distinction is worth £326 is a question only your street-facing wall can answer.

The Quartz also offers an 8.5-metre cable option (£99 extra), useful if the consumer unit and the parking spot are on opposite ends of the house. The VEC03's cable is 5 metres — the shortest tethered option in the catalogue. That half-metre can matter more than it sounds when routing around a doorframe.

Smart tariffs: the Quartz's real functional advantage

The EVEC VEC03 supports OCPP 1.6J and can schedule charging through its own app, but it has no direct integration with any UK smart tariff. It is not on the Intelligent Octopus Go compatible list. It cannot respond to OVO Charge Anytime. On a flat-rate or simple two-rate tariff like Octopus Go — where you set a timer for 00:30–05:30 and forget — this barely matters. The charger charges; the timer does the rest.

The Andersen Quartz, by contrast, integrates with both Intelligent Octopus Go and OVO Charge Anytime. On Intelligent Octopus Go at 7p/kWh, the grid decides when your car charges within the off-peak window — and can slot in bonus cheap sessions outside it. The VEC03 cannot participate.

If you are on Octopus Agile, neither charger is ideal. For half-hourly price chasing, the Ohme Home Pro at £535 remains the standard answer — £160 less than the Quartz and sharper at the one thing Agile demands.

The EVEC's quiet trump card: the OZEV grant

The VEC03 is OZEV-approved. For eligible renters and flat owners, the £500 grant covers the £369 unit outright and chips into the installation bill. The Andersen Quartz is not confirmed on the current OZEV-approved list — so grant-eligible buyers should treat its price as the full £695 plus install, with no subsidy.

The VEC03 also includes a Type A RCD with 6 mA DC leakage detection and PEN fault protection inside the unit. That typically saves £80–£100 on the installation because the electrician does not need to add those components to the consumer unit. Combined with the grant, a renter's total outlay can be startlingly low.

The app, though, is the VEC03's weak point. Customer complaints about Wi-Fi reliability and intermittent scheduled charging are consistent enough to take seriously. If your home network is patchy and you have no Ethernet run to the garage, the VEC03's lack of 4G fallback becomes a practical problem. The Quartz has no 4G either, but its app and firmware have a more settled reputation.

Which to buy

Buy the EVEC VEC03 if:

• You want the lowest possible total cost — unit, install, and grant combined
• You are on a flat-rate or simple off-peak tariff and just need a timer
• You are a renter or flat owner eligible for the £500 OZEV grant

Buy the Andersen Quartz if:

• You want Intelligent Octopus Go or OVO Charge Anytime integration built in
• A seven-year warranty and a wall-facing finish matter to you
• You need the 8.5-metre cable option

For most buyers — particularly those eligible for the OZEV grant — the VEC03 does the job at a price that is hard to argue with. The Quartz is a better-made product with a longer warranty and genuine tariff integration, but £326 is a lot of money for advantages that not every household will use. If smart-tariff support matters but the Andersen price does not appeal, the Ohme Home Pro at £535 sits neatly between them — and is sharper on variable rates than either. If budget is the only axis, the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 at £362 undercuts even the EVEC. But on the plain question of these two: the VEC03, for most people, is the sensible choice.