Simpson & Partners Home 7 vs NexBlue Point 2

The £115 between beauty and bet

These are two of the less familiar names in UK home charging, and they could hardly be more different in what they prioritise. The Simpson & Partners Home 7 costs £649 and puts most of that into materials — anodised aluminium, optional Accoya wood or Cotswolds Green finishes, and a 10-year enclosure warranty. The NexBlue Point 2 costs £534 and puts its money into protocol support — V2G readiness, OCPP 2.0.1, a built-in 4G eSIM with lifetime connectivity, and tariff automation via EcoPilot.

• Simpson & Partners Home 7 — UK-manufactured, design-led, tethered or untethered, 10-year enclosure warranty. The charger you buy because it will still look good in a decade.
• NexBlue Point 2 — untethered only, 2.1 kg, V2G-ready, lifetime 4G, five-year warranty. The charger you buy because it might still be useful in a decade.

What the Simpson & Partners Home 7's £115 buys

It buys materials and longevity of the enclosure. The Home 7 is built from anodised aluminium, manufactured in the UK, and offered in finishes that most chargers — plastic boxes in black or white — do not attempt. If the unit sits on a front wall visible from the street, this matters. It is not as extensive as the Andersen A3 finish range, but at £649 versus Andersen's £900, it does not need to be.

The 10-year warranty headline deserves a footnote: it covers the enclosure, not the electronics inside it. Those carry a three-year warranty — standard for the market, but not the decade-long promise the marketing implies. The NexBlue's five-year warranty covers the whole unit, which is arguably more useful even though it is half the headline number.

The Home 7 also supports 22kW three-phase charging. For the roughly 5% of UK homes with three-phase supply, that is a genuine differentiator — the NexBlue is locked to 7.4kW single-phase. For everyone else, both chargers deliver around 7kW, and the three-phase option is irrelevant.

Where the NexBlue Point 2 earns its price

At £534, the NexBlue packs in features that usually require spending more or buying accessories. The CT clamp for dynamic load balancing is included. The 4G eSIM — lifetime, no subscription — means it stays connected even if your home Wi-Fi drops. V2G and ISO 15118 readiness are baked into the hardware, so if vehicle-to-grid tariffs arrive in the UK (when, not if), the Point 2 will not need replacing.

On tariff intelligence, EcoPilot handles Octopus Intelligent Go, Octopus Agile, and other time-of-use tariffs. The Simpson & Partners Home 7 supports Intelligent Go scheduling and timer-based charging on Octopus Go and EDF GoElectric, but its app is less polished and its tariff integration less granular. On Agile — where rates shift every 30 minutes — the NexBlue's automation is the more capable tool.

Solar surplus charging is possible on both, though neither is the first choice for a solar household. The NexBlue requires the separate Zen accessory; the Simpson & Partners lists solar compatibility but without the depth of, say, the myenergi Zappi GLO. If solar is the primary concern, that comparison is better addressed elsewhere.

The brand-maturity question

Neither Simpson & Partners nor NexBlue has the install base of Ohme, Tesla, or myenergi. Both have smaller installer networks, fewer long-term user reviews, and less battle-tested apps. This is the honest trade-off for buying either of these over, say, the Ohme Home Pro at £539 — which sits between them in price and carries a much larger body of real-world data.

If that uncertainty bothers you more than the feature set excites you, the Ohme is the safer middle ground. If it does not, the question is simpler: do you want the charger that looks best, or the charger that does most?

The verdict

Buy the Simpson & Partners Home 7 if:

• The charger is visible from the street and you want premium finishes to match the house
• You have three-phase supply and want 22kW charging
• A 10-year enclosure warranty matters more to you than V2G readiness

Buy the NexBlue Point 2 if:

• You want tariff automation on Agile or Intelligent Go without paying more than £534
• V2G readiness and OCPP 2.0.1 matter — you are buying for the next five to ten years, not just today
• You prefer lifetime 4G backup over relying on home Wi-Fi alone

For most buyers — those on a single-phase supply, charging overnight on a smart tariff, with the unit tucked around the side of the house — the NexBlue Point 2 offers more for £115 less. The Simpson & Partners Home 7 is the better purchase when the charger is part of the house's kerb appeal and you want something that will weather a decade on an exposed wall without looking tired. That is a real reason to spend more. It is just not the most common one.