Wallbox Pulsar Max vs Wallbox Quasar 2: £536 wallbox or £6,100 bidirectional bet?

A £5,564 gap — and what sits inside it

These are both Wallbox products, both run the myWallbox app, both carry IK10 impact ratings. That is roughly where the family resemblance ends.

The Wallbox Pulsar Max is a £536 AC home charger — 7.4 kW on single-phase, tethered Type 2, five-year warranty, one of the smallest units on the market at 198 × 201 × 99 mm. It charges your car overnight and does nothing else.

The Wallbox Quasar 2 is a £6,100 bidirectional DC unit — up to 12.8 kW in both directions via CCS2, capable of vehicle-to-home backup and vehicle-to-grid export. It is not openly on sale in the UK. You can pre-register. The installed cost, once you add a specialist installer and the DNO's G99 approval process, is likely north of £7,600.

The gap is £5,564 on hardware alone. That is not a premium; it is a category boundary.

Who the Quasar 2 is for — today

A narrow group. You need a car that supports bidirectional DC charging via CCS2. Right now that means, principally, the Kia EV9. You need a property where the DNO will grant G99 export approval — a process that takes 30 to 60 working days and may impose a G100 generation cap. You need an installer qualified for DC wallbox work, of whom there are far fewer than for standard AC units. And you need a V2G tariff or time-of-use arbitrage strategy aggressive enough to justify the outlay.

If all of that lines up, the Quasar 2 is the reference product. 12.8 kW bidirectional DC is substantial — it can back up a house during a grid outage or export stored energy during peak pricing windows. On a tariff like Octopus Agile, where half-hourly rates swing from 5p to 35p or more, discharging your EV battery into the grid at peak and recharging at trough is a real economic proposition. Whether it recoups £7,600+ in any reasonable timeframe depends on variables no one can promise — tariff spreads, battery degradation tolerance from the car manufacturer, and how many hours a day you can afford to have the car tethered.

The £500 OZEV grant does not apply to the Quasar 2. The Pulsar Max is OZEV-approved, so eligible renters and flat owners get that £500 off.

Why the Pulsar Max is the practical Wallbox

At £536, the Pulsar Max sits in the middle of the AC charger field — a few pounds more than the Ohme Home Pro at £535, and £58 above the Tesla Wall Connector at £478. Its case is physical: it is genuinely small. If your mounting wall is tight — a narrow pillar between garage doors, a cramped utility-room wall — the Pulsar Max fits where chunkier units won't.

The five-year warranty is strong. Only the Simpson & Partners Home 7 at ten years and the Andersen A3 at seven beat it. The Quasar 2, by contrast, carries three years — less reassuring on a unit that costs more than eleven times as much.

The Pulsar Max's weakness is software. It has no direct tariff API; scheduling is manual through the app. On a fixed off-peak tariff like Octopus Go — set to charge at 00:30, forget about it — that is fine. On anything variable, the Ohme Home Pro or Hypervolt Home 3 Pro handle it better. If that trade-off bothers you, the Pulsar Max vs Ohme Home Pro comparison covers the detail.

The V2G-ready middle ground

If bidirectional energy is the goal but £6,100 for hardware alone feels premature — and it is premature, given the Quasar 2 isn't even on open sale — there is a middle path. The Zaptec Go 2 at £500 and the NexBlue Point 2 at £530 are both V2G-ready AC chargers. They cannot discharge your car battery today, but their firmware and protocols are built to support it when AC V2G standards and car compatibility catch up. Paired with a home battery like GivEnergy's ecosystem, they cover backup and tariff arbitrage without betting £6,100 on a device you can't yet order.

The verdict

Buy the Wallbox Pulsar Max if:

• You want a compact, reliable AC charger with a five-year warranty — and you want it installed next week, not next year.
• Your wall space is tight and standard-sized units won't fit.
• You have or plan to install three-phase supply and want the 22 kW option from the same brand.

Buy the Wallbox Quasar 2 if:

• You own a CCS2-compatible bidirectional car — today, not hypothetically.
• You have confirmed your DNO will approve G99 export at your property.
• You have modelled the payback on a V2G or time-of-use arbitrage strategy and it holds up against £7,600+ installed.

For the overwhelming majority of UK households charging a Tesla or any other EV, the Pulsar Max does the job. The Quasar 2 is an interesting piece of hardware aimed at a market that barely exists yet. When that market matures — more cars, more V2G tariffs, confirmed UK pricing, open orders — it will deserve a second look. Until then, £536 buys a charger. £6,100 buys a waiting list.