Ohme Home Pro vs Wallbox Quasar 2: £535 charger or £6,100 experiment?

A charger and a thesis walk into a garage

The Ohme Home Pro costs £535. The Wallbox Quasar 2 costs £6,100. That is a £5,565 gap — enough to buy eleven Ohme Home Pros, or a decent second-hand hatchback, or roughly four years of off-peak electricity on Octopus Intelligent Go at 7p/kWh.

The comparison exists because both units mount on a wall and plug into an EV. Beyond that, they are different species. The Ohme is a smart AC charger that puts cheap electricity into your car. The Quasar 2 is a bidirectional DC unit that can push power back out of your car and into your house — or, eventually, the grid. One is a product you can buy today. The other is a pre-registration page and a promise.

• Ohme Home Pro — £535, 7.4 kW AC, smart tariff integration, available now, OZEV-approved.
• Wallbox Quasar 2 — £6,100, 12.8 kW bidirectional DC, V2H and V2G capable, UK pre-registration only, not OZEV-approved.

What £5,565 actually buys

The Quasar 2's headline trick is Vehicle-to-Home: when the grid price spikes, your car's battery powers your kettle, your lights, your heat pump. In theory, a 77 kWh EV battery becomes a home storage unit that dwarfs any wall-mounted battery you could buy. In practice, the list of cars that support bidirectional DC charging via CCS2 remains short — the Kia EV9 is the flagship, with more manufacturers expected but not confirmed. If your car is a Tesla, the Quasar 2 cannot do the thing it was built for.

Then there is installation. A standard AC wallbox costs £400–£600 to fit. The Quasar 2 needs a specialist installer, a DNO G99 application with a 30–60 working-day lead time, and an installed total likely north of £7,600. The unit weighs around 20 kg — roughly six times the Ohme's 3.5 kg. It is not a weekend project.

The Ohme, by contrast, goes on a wall, connects to your Wi-Fi (or its built-in 4G SIM), and starts chasing cheap half-hours on Octopus Agile or holding to the 7p/kWh window on Intelligent Go. No grid export application. No compatibility lottery. Eligible renters and flat owners can claim the £500 OZEV grant towards it; the Quasar 2 is not OZEV-approved.

The V2G maths — does it add up yet?

Assume the best case: you own a compatible car, you secure G99 approval, and you land a V2G export tariff that pays you to discharge. Even then, the Quasar 2 needs to earn back roughly £7,600 (unit plus install) before it breaks even against an Ohme Home Pro installed for under £1,500 total. At current domestic export rates, that is a long road — measured in years, not months.

The counterargument is resilience. If your area suffers frequent power cuts, a car battery backing up your home has obvious value that a spreadsheet undersells. But that is an insurance argument, not an energy-savings argument, and £7,600 buys a lot of insurance.

For buyers who want to hold a V2G-ready position without the bidirectional price tag, the Zaptec Go 2 at £500 and the NexBlue Point 2 at £530 both support OCPP 2.0.1 and can be upgraded when V2G infrastructure matures. Neither drains your savings account in the meantime.

The Ohme's actual competition

Framed honestly, the Quasar 2 is not the Ohme Home Pro's competitor — it is a different category. If you are weighing the Ohme against something in its own weight class, the Tesla Wall Connector at £478 or the Wallbox Pulsar Max at £536 are the real alternatives. The Ohme vs Tesla comparison covers that ground in detail.

The verdict

Buy the Ohme Home Pro if:

• You want a charger that works with your car, your tariff, and your house — today, not eventually.
• You are on (or plan to switch to) a smart tariff like Intelligent Go, Agile, or OVO Charge Anytime.
• You would rather spend £535 on a charger and the rest on electricity.

Buy the Wallbox Quasar 2 if:

• You own a bidirectional-capable car and have confirmed CCS2 V2H support with your manufacturer.
• You are prepared for a £7,600+ installed cost, a DNO application, and a specialist installer.
• You value home backup power enough to pay a steep premium over conventional charging plus a separate home battery.

For the overwhelming majority of UK EV owners — Tesla drivers included — the Ohme Home Pro is the charger to put on the wall. It does one job, does it well, and costs a tenth of the alternative. The Quasar 2 is a fascinating piece of hardware aimed at a future that is still being built. When that future arrives, and the compatible car list stretches past a handful of models, the calculus changes. Until then, the Ohme earns its keep every night.