Wallbox Pulsar Max vs CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3

A compact home charger versus a car-park unit on your garage wall

The Wallbox Pulsar Max costs £513. The CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 costs £1086 — £573 more. That gap is not subtle, and neither is the reason for it. The Wallbox is built for a house. The CTEK is built for a site, and happens to have OZEV approval.

• Wallbox Pulsar Max — £513, 4.2 kg, 5-metre tethered cable, app scheduling, Intelligent Octopus Go compatible. A home charger that fits in a palm.
• CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 — £1086, up to 24 kg, untethered Type 2 socket, OCPP 1.6-J and 2.0.1, built-in Type B RCD and MID-approved meter. A piece of infrastructure.

What £573 buys — and what it doesn't on single-phase

On a standard UK single-phase supply, both chargers deliver around 7.4kW. The car charges at the same speed. The electricity costs the same per kWh. The CTEK's headline 22kW only materialises on a three-phase connection, which the overwhelming majority of UK households do not have.

So that £573 premium buys three things a single-phase homeowner cannot use — full three-phase output, an MID-approved energy meter designed for billing third parties, and OCPP back-end flexibility aimed at fleet or multi-tenant environments. It also buys a built-in MRCD Type B, which saves the installer fitting a separate one in the consumer unit. That is a genuine saving — typically £100–£200 off the install bill — but it does not close a £573 gap.

The Wallbox, meanwhile, offers something the CTEK does not: a first-party app with direct Intelligent Octopus Go support. The CTEK has no native integration with any UK energy supplier. Scheduling requires a third-party OCPP platform like Monta, which adds a layer of complexity most domestic users would rather avoid.

The CTEK's case: three-phase, metering, and open protocols

There is a buyer for whom the CTEK makes sense at home. If you already have — or are installing — a three-phase supply, the Chargestorm Connected 3 delivers 22kW natively, with ISO 15118 plug-and-charge readiness and dual Ethernet alongside Wi-Fi. The MID-approved meter matters if you are a landlord recharging tenants at cost, or running a small business fleet from a domestic property. OCPP 2.0.1 support means the charger is not locked to any single back-end — it can outlast whatever app ecosystem exists today.

The install cost reflects the hardware's ambitions. Expect £900–£1,300 for the CTEK, against £400–£600 for the Wallbox. Even with the £500 OZEV grant (available to eligible renters and flat owners on both units), the total outlay for the CTEK — hardware plus install — lands somewhere around £1,486–£1,886. The Wallbox, after the same grant, sits at roughly £413–£613 all in.

For three-phase buyers weighing up alternatives, the Zaptec Go 2 at £638 offers 22kW three-phase in a far smaller, lighter package — though without the CTEK's built-in Type B RCD or MID meter. That comparison is covered in more detail on the Zaptec Go 2 vs CTEK page.

Smart tariffs: where the Wallbox holds the advantage

The Pulsar Max is not the cleverest charger on the market — the Ohme Home Pro at £539 goes deeper on half-hourly tariff optimisation, and the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro at £625 offers broader supplier integration. But the Wallbox does support Intelligent Octopus Go, which means the car can be slotted into cheap overnight windows automatically. On Octopus Go at 8.5p/kWh, a manual schedule set in the myWallbox app does the job.

The CTEK, by contrast, has no direct tariff link to any UK supplier. You can schedule via Monta or another OCPP-compatible platform, but you are building the logic yourself. For a charger costing £1086, the absence of native smart-tariff behaviour is conspicuous.

The verdict

Buy the Wallbox Pulsar Max if:

• Your home has a single-phase supply — which is almost all UK homes
• You want Intelligent Octopus Go integration or simple app-based scheduling
• Space is tight: at 198 × 201 × 99 mm and 4.2 kg, it mounts where larger units cannot

Buy the CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 if:

• You have or plan a three-phase supply and want native 22kW charging
• You need MID-approved metering — for tenant billing, business use, or expense claims
• You value OCPP 2.0.1 and open-protocol flexibility over any single app ecosystem

For the typical UK household — single-phase, one car, an off-peak tariff — the Wallbox Pulsar Max is the right charger. It costs less than half as much, installs for less, integrates with more tariffs, and charges at the same speed. The CTEK is a fine piece of engineering aimed at a narrow audience. If you are not in that audience, the £573 is better left in your pocket.