Ohme Home Pro vs Easee One: the £130 automation question

The £130 automation question

Two chargers at the affordable end of the market, solving the same problem differently. The Easee One is £405 — the cheapest mainstream charger in the UK — and leaves the clever bits to you. The Ohme Home Pro is £535 and does the clever bits itself.

The shortest version:

• Easee One — £405, untethered, light, and cheaper to install. Manual scheduling.
• Ohme Home Pro — £535, tethered, talks directly to Octopus, OVO and British Gas. Hands-off on a smart tariff.

What the £130 actually buys

Direct API integration, mostly. The Ohme Home Pro is an officially recommended charger for Octopus Intelligent Go, which matters because Intelligent Go doesn't just hand you a fixed off-peak window — it hands you extra cheap half-hours when the grid has spare capacity, and you only catch them if your charger is listening. The Ohme listens. The Easee One runs a schedule you set, and that's it.

On a flat-rate tariff, that distinction is worth nothing. On Octopus Go with its tidy 12:30am–5:30am off-peak block, it's worth not much — a manual schedule on the Easee catches the same 8.5p/kWh hours. On Intelligent Go or Octopus Agile, where rates move, the Ohme's £130 premium starts paying itself back in weeks, not years.

The other thing £130 buys is weatherproofing and a colour screen. IP65 on the Ohme versus IP54 on the Easee — relevant if the charger lives on an exposed wall. The screen is nice; not decisive.

Where the Easee earns its price

Two things. First, the install cost. The Easee One includes a Type B RCD and open-PEN detection in the unit, which means the installer doesn't need to add them as separate parts — roughly £100–£200 off the labour-and-materials line on a clean job. Combined with the £405 unit price, total installed tends to land near £700. The Ohme Home Pro on the same install sits closer to £935–£1,035 once you add £400–£500 of fitting.

Second, weight and footprint. The Easee is 1.5 kg, which sounds trivial until the installer is drilling into cavity brick. It's the lightest mount in this price bracket.

The compromise is the untethered design. Clean wall, no cable dangling when the car's away — but you handle a cable every single time you plug in. For a one-car household parking in the same bay every night, that's a slightly daft ritual. For flats, shared driveways, or households juggling Teslas and non-Teslas with different cable preferences, it's the right answer.

Grant, tariffs, and the actual decision

If you're grant-eligible — renter or flat owner — the £500 OZEV grant covers the Easee One outright and contributes to install; it also knocks the Ohme Home Pro down to £35. That second number changes the calculation. A £35 Ohme on a smart tariff is not a close call.

If you're not grant-eligible, the question is about the tariff. On OVO Charge Anytime at 14p/kWh, or Intelligent Go at 7p, the Ohme's direct integration is the point of the charger. On Scottish Power EV Saver or EDF GoElectric — both fixed 5-hour off-peak windows — a scheduled Easee does the same job for less money.

Solar owners should look sideways. The Ohme does solar diverting without extra hardware, but the Ohme vs Zappi GLO comparison is the better read if export optimisation is why you're here.

Which to buy

Buy the Ohme Home Pro if:

• You're on Intelligent Go, Agile, or Charge Anytime and want hands-off charging
• You prefer a tethered cable and a weatherproof IP65 rating
• You qualify for the OZEV grant — £35 net is a different proposition

Buy the Easee One if:

• You're on a flat-rate tariff, or a fixed-window tariff like Octopus Go or EDF GoElectric
• You want the lowest installed cost on the market
• A clean untethered wall matters more to you than the ritual of plugging in

If the tariff is smart, pay the £130. If it isn't, keep it. That's the whole decision — the rest is detail.