Ohme Home Pro vs Indra Smart PRO

The £144 between a budget smart charger and a tariff-obsessed one

The Indra Smart PRO costs £395. The Ohme Home Pro costs £539. Both are 7.4 kW, single-phase, tethered Type 2 units with smart tariff support, solar diverting, and dynamic load balancing. Both carry three-year warranties and OZEV approval. On paper, they look like the same charger at two prices.

They are not. The £144 gap buys a fundamentally different relationship with your energy tariff — and whether that matters depends entirely on which tariff you are on.

• Indra Smart PRO — £395, SPD included, 6-metre cable, solid scheduling, the cheapest total-install smart charger on the market.
• Ohme Home Pro — £539, direct Octopus API integration, built-in 4G, 5-metre cable, the charger that chases half-hourly rates for you.

What the Indra's price actually buys

The headline is £395, but the real story is what ships in the box. The Indra Smart PRO includes a surge protection device — a component your installer would otherwise add to the consumer unit at a cost of £100–£150 in parts and labour. The CT clamp for solar diverting is also included. Strip those back and the effective unit cost sits somewhere around £150–£250, which is territory usually occupied by dumb chargers with no app at all.

The 6-metre cable is a metre longer than the Ohme's standard 5-metre lead. For a driveway where the charger sits on a side wall rather than directly beside the car, that metre matters more than it sounds. The Ohme offers an 8-metre cable at extra cost; the Indra does not need the upgrade for most installs.

The trade-off is the app. Indra's software is functional — it schedules, it reports, it locks via RFID — but it is not in the same league as Ohme's. Session cost tracking, tariff visualisation, and the colour display on the Ohme unit itself all contribute to a more polished daily experience. Whether you care about that polish is personal. The Indra charges your car at the same 7.4 kW either way.

Where the Ohme earns back its premium

The Ohme Home Pro has direct supplier integrations. On Octopus Intelligent Go, the recorded off-peak rate is 8p/kWh across 11:30pm–5:30am. Compatible managed scheduling can also allocate charging outside the standard window; confirm current vehicle and charger eligibility with Octopus.

On Octopus Agile, where rates change every 30 minutes, the difference is starker. A compatible automated setup can respond to the published price curve. The Indra can schedule a fixed block — for example, 12:30am–5:30am on Octopus Go at 8.5p/kWh — but it does not respond to each Agile half-hour in the same way.

The built-in 4G SIM is a quiet advantage too. It works for three years without a subscription, and it means the charger stays online even if your home Wi-Fi does not reach the driveway. The Indra relies on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only. If your router is three walls and a garage away, that is worth knowing before you buy.

The grant and total install cost

Both chargers are OZEV-approved. For eligible buyers — renters and flat owners — the £500 grant covers the Indra Smart PRO's £395 unit price outright and chips into the install costs too. For the Ohme at £539, the grant leaves £39 on the unit before install.

For homeowners without grant eligibility, the Indra's total installed cost is hard to beat. At £395 for the unit — with SPD included — plus £400–£600 for a standard install, you are looking at roughly £795–£995 on the wall. The Ohme, at £539 plus £400–£500 install (its own estimate), lands at £939–£1,039. The gap narrows because the Ohme's install range is slightly tighter, but the Indra still comes in cheaper in almost every scenario.

If your priority is the lowest possible outlay for a genuinely smart charger, the VCHRGD Seven Pro at £430 and the Sync Energy Wall Charger 2 at £400 are also worth a look — but neither matches the Indra's included SPD or the Ohme's tariff depth.

Which to buy

Buy the Indra Smart PRO if:

• You want the lowest total install cost for a smart charger — the included SPD is a genuine saving
• You are on a fixed off-peak tariff like Octopus Go or EDF GoElectric, where simple scheduling is enough
• You prefer a 6-metre cable without paying extra

Buy the Ohme Home Pro if:

• You are on Octopus Intelligent Go or Octopus Agile and want the charger to chase the cheapest half-hours automatically
• Your Wi-Fi does not reliably reach the charger location — the built-in 4G solves that
• You value a polished app with per-session cost tracking and tariff visualisation

For most buyers on a simple off-peak tariff, the Indra at £395 is the more rational purchase. The £144 you save is real money, and the charger does its job. But if you are already paying for Intelligent Go or Agile — tariffs designed around smart hardware — the Ohme is the charger those tariffs were built to talk to. The premium pays for itself in cheaper kilowatt-hours, not in features you admire and forget.