Ohme Home Pro vs Andersen A3: software or sculpture?

Software or sculpture

The Ohme Home Pro costs £535. The Andersen A3 costs £995. They push the same 7.4kW down the same Type 2 cable into the same Tesla. The £460 gap buys you neither speed nor cleverness — it buys you a wall fitting you might actually want to look at.

That's the honest framing. Everything else follows from it.

• Ohme Home Pro — the charger that talks to your tariff. Direct API links to Octopus, OVO and British Gas. Built-in 4G. Plastic body, colour display, does the job.
• Andersen A3 — the charger that hides its cable. Anodised aluminium, 247 finishes, seven-year warranty. Smart features are present; they're not the reason to buy.

What the £460 actually buys

On the specs that determine your electricity bill — power, smart scheduling, tariff integration — the Ohme is the stronger product. It has direct API integration with Octopus Intelligent Go at 7p/kWh, OVO Charge Anytime and British Gas. It ships with a 4G SIM (three years included), so if the router is the other side of the house, the charger doesn't care. It has built-in solar diverting with no extra CT clamp to buy. It's IP65.

The Andersen A3 does the same tariff job — Intelligent Go, Charge Anytime — through its own app. But the Andersen app is competent rather than the point of the product. You don't buy an A3 because it schedules better. You buy it because the cable retracts inside the unit and the front is brushed aluminium in one of 247 finishes, and because no other charger on the UK market does either.

The A3 also holds the warranty record here: seven years, against the Ohme's three. If a charger is going to sit on the front wall of a house for a decade, that matters. If it's in the garage, less so.

The visibility test

This is the question that decides it, and there are only two answers.

If the charger will live somewhere visible — front driveway, side return facing the pavement, anywhere a neighbour or a buyer walks past — the Andersen earns its £995. Nothing else in the catalogue looks like it. The Simpson & Partners Home 7 at £649 is a credible middle ground, but it's not in the same finish league. The hidden cable is the feature people notice; everything retracts, and the wall reads as a clean aluminium box rather than a tangle.

If the charger will live in a garage, behind a gate, or on a rear driveway no visitor sees, the A3's argument collapses. You're paying £460 extra to look at brushed aluminium in the dark. The Ohme Home Pro is the better product on every axis that isn't visual, and the money is better spent on the tariff, the car or nothing at all.

Where the Ohme quietly wins

Assume a Tesla on Intelligent Go. The Ohme's direct Octopus integration means charging lands inside the 7p window without manual schedules. Over a year of typical driving, that's meaningful — several hundred pounds cheaper than topping up at the day rate.

The A3 can hit the same window through its app, but Ohme was the charger Octopus built the integration around. If the tariff is the reason you're here, the software-first charger is the one to buy.

Solar buyers have a different question again — that's better served by the Ohme vs Zappi GLO comparison, where dedicated solar hardware changes the argument.

The verdict

Buy the Ohme Home Pro if:

• You're on a smart tariff, or likely to switch to one
• The charger lives somewhere you don't look at
• You want the £460 back in your pocket

Buy the Andersen A3 if:

• The charger is visible from the street or public view
• Seven-year warranty and anodised aluminium matter to you
• The house is the kind where nothing ugly is allowed on the front wall

On most UK walls, we'd fit the Ohme and not look back. The Andersen is the right answer for a specific kind of house with a specific kind of owner — and if you're that owner, you already know. For everyone else, £460 is a lot to pay for a cable that hides itself.