Indra Smart PRO vs Ohme ePod

The £104 between a cable on the wall and a socket on it

The Indra Smart PRO costs £395 with a 6-metre tethered cable, surge protection in the box, and a CT clamp for solar. The Ohme ePod costs £499, ships without a cable, and weighs 1.48 kg — roughly the same as a bag of sugar. Both deliver 7.4 kW on single-phase. Both carry three-year warranties. The gap between them is £104 on paper, but the real gap is wider once you account for what each box expects you to buy separately.

• Indra Smart PRO — £395, tethered, surge protection and CT clamp included. The budget-conscious choice that quietly trims your install bill.
• Ohme ePod — £499 before you add a Type 2 cable (£100–£200). The smallest smart charger on the UK market, with Ohme's tariff brain and a built-in 4G SIM.

The true cost gap is not £104

The Indra ships with a surge protection device. Most installers would otherwise add one to the consumer unit at £100–£150 in parts and labour. The CT clamp for solar diversion is also in the box — that saves another £50–£100 against chargers that charge extra for it. Factor those in and the Indra's effective cost drops to somewhere around £150–£250, depending on your installer's pricing.

The ePod, meanwhile, arrives without a cable. A decent 5-metre Type 2 lead runs £100–£200. Add that to the £499 unit price and you are looking at £600–£700 before installation. The all-in difference between these two setups is closer to £350–£450 than the headline £104.

That arithmetic matters. If you are buying on value alone, the Indra wins before you plug anything in.

Where the ePod's brain earns its keep

The ePod runs the same Ohme software as the Ohme Home Pro — direct API integration with Octopus Intelligent Go, Octopus Agile, and OVO Charge Anytime. On Agile, where rates shift every thirty minutes, the ePod chases the cheapest slots automatically. The Indra supports smart scheduling on Intelligent Go, Octopus Go, OVO Charge Anytime, and EDF GoElectric, but its app is more basic and its optimisation less granular.

On a fixed-window tariff like Octopus Go — 8.5p/kWh between 00:30 and 05:30 — both chargers do the same job: delay the charge until the cheap window opens. The Ohme's advantage only compounds on variable tariffs where half-hourly decisions add up over months.

The ePod's other trump card is connectivity. It uses a built-in 3G/4G SIM with no Wi-Fi option at all. For a detached garage at the end of the garden, or a parking space behind a thick stone wall, that solves a problem the Indra — which relies on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth — cannot. Check your mobile signal at the mounting spot first, though. No Wi-Fi fallback means no signal, no smart features.

Tethered versus untethered — a practical question, not a philosophical one

The Indra hangs a 6-metre cable on your wall. You walk to the car, plug in, walk away. The ePod gives you a Type 2 socket; you keep the cable in the boot or coiled on a hook. That suits drivers who use public destination chargers and want one cable for everything, or households where two EVs with different socket positions share a single charger point.

For most single-car homes with a driveway, tethered is simpler. The cable is always there, always the right length, never left at a hotel. The untethered argument only strengthens if you travel regularly to places with untethered public posts, or if a second EV is on the horizon.

The grant question

Both chargers are OZEV-approved. The £500 grant — available to eligible renters and flat owners — covers the Indra's £395 unit price outright and chips into the install costs. For the ePod at £499, it wipes out the unit price almost entirely, though you still need the cable on top. Grant-eligible buyers get an even stronger deal from the Indra, because the grant absorbs the charger and a meaningful slice of the installation.

Which to buy

Buy the Indra Smart PRO if:

• You want the lowest total cost — charger, cable, SPD, CT clamp, all in the box for £395
• Your Wi-Fi reaches the charger location comfortably
• You charge on a fixed-window tariff like Octopus Go or EDF GoElectric

Buy the Ohme ePod if:

• You need an untethered socket — second car, shared parking, cable-in-the-boot lifestyle
• Your Wi-Fi does not reach the wall but 4G does
• You are on Octopus Agile and want half-hourly price tracking without compromise

For most buyers — single car, driveway, decent Wi-Fi — the Indra Smart PRO is the more rational purchase. It costs £104 less before you even account for the cable and SPD savings, and it does everything a fixed-rate tariff asks of it. The ePod is a specialist: tiny, clever, cellular. It solves problems the Indra cannot, but only if you have those problems. If the ePod's smarts appeal but you would rather have a tethered cable and a screen, the Ohme Home Pro at £539 is the tidier route — same brain, everything attached. For the rest, the Indra at £395 is hard to argue with.