Hypervolt Home 3 Pro vs Indra Smart PRO: what the £91 actually buys

What the £91 actually buys

On paper this is a straight price fight. The Indra Smart PRO is £599. The Hypervolt Home 3 Pro is £690. Both are 7.4kW, tethered, OZEV-approved, British-made, and single-phase only. Both include a CT clamp for solar. Both speak to the main smart tariffs.

The £91 gap, then, doesn't buy you a different category of charger. It buys you three specific things: a tougher enclosure (IP66 + IK10 versus IP54), a longer cable option (up to 10 metres versus a fixed 6), and a UK support line that actually answers. Whether those are worth £91 is the whole question.

• Hypervolt Home 3 Pro — the quietly-built all-rounder. Rarely the best answer to one question, usually the second-best to all of them.
• Indra Smart PRO — cheaper on the sticker, and cheaper again at install if your electrician was going to add a surge protection device anyway.

The surge protector changes the sum

The Indra ships with a surge protection device in the box. On a typical UK install, an SPD is a £100–£150 line item on the electrician's quote — sometimes more, depending on the consumer-unit work involved. If your installer would have added one, the Indra's effective price drops below £500, and the charger-only comparison stops being £599 versus £690. It becomes something closer to £450 versus £690.

That's the whole argument for the Indra. It isn't a flashier app or a cleverer algorithm; it's a component that saves money at the point of installation. Ask your electrician whether they'd fit an SPD on a new EV circuit. If the answer is yes, the Indra Smart PRO is the cheaper charger on the wall, not the pricier one.

If the answer is no — and on many modern consumer units, it is no — the equation flips. The Indra's sticker stays at £599, and the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro justifies its extra £91 on build and cable alone.

When the Hypervolt's premium earns itself

Two scenarios make the Hypervolt the right buy regardless of what your electrician does with the SPD question.

The first is a difficult cable run. The Hypervolt offers a 10-metre tethered option — the longest on this site. If your parking spot is at the far end of a driveway, or the only practical mounting point is on the wrong side of the house, the Indra's 6 metres may not reach. That's not a specification quibble; it's a "you physically cannot charge the car" problem. Budget the cable length first, then argue about everything else.

The second is exposure. IP66 and IK10 is the toughest rating on any charger we list — proper weatherproofing and impact resistance. The Indra's IP54 is fine for a sheltered wall under a porch. On an exposed coastal property, a busy shared driveway, or anywhere a wheelie bin might swing into it, the Hypervolt is the one that will still be working in year seven.

Where neither quite fits

If you're on Octopus Intelligent Go and want the tariff to do the thinking for you, the Ohme Home Pro is £535 and remains the sharper tool for that job — its half-hourly scheduling is a full generation ahead of the app work on either of these. The Ohme vs Indra comparison covers that ground in more detail.

If solar is the reason you're buying a charger at all — not a nice-to-have, the actual purpose — neither the Hypervolt nor the Indra is the answer. The Zappi GLO at £750 has surplus-solar logic that both of these lack. A CT clamp in the box is the start of solar integration, not the end of it.

And if you want the cheapest competent tethered charger, the Easee One at £405 or the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 at £362 undercut both by a meaningful margin.

The verdict

Buy the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro if:

• You need a cable longer than 6 metres
• The charger will live somewhere exposed, or on a busy driveway
• You value a UK phone-support line you can actually reach

Buy the Indra Smart PRO if:

• Your installer's quote includes, or would include, a surge protection device
• You want smart-tariff scheduling without paying for build you don't need
• The RFID lock for per-user tracking is useful (shared driveway, family fleet)

If I were buying one today for an ordinary sheltered install with a short cable run and a modern consumer unit, the Indra is the more sensible purchase — the SPD alone tilts the sum. If the install is awkward, or the charger will cop the weather, the extra £91 for the Hypervolt is honest money.