myenergi Zappi GLO vs Hypervolt Home 3 Pro: solar brain or all-rounder?

The £60 that buys you a solar brain

These two chargers sit close in price — £750 for the myenergi Zappi GLO, £690 for the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro, a £60 gap — but they're answering different questions. One is a specialist that presumes you own solar panels. The other is the quiet all-rounder you buy when you don't want to keep thinking about the charger.

• Zappi GLO — a solar computer with a charging cable attached. Eco+ mode is the reason it exists.
• Hypervolt Home 3 Pro — rarely the best answer to a single question, almost always the second-best answer to all of them.

When the Zappi GLO earns its £750

The Zappi GLO was designed around surplus-solar diverting, and that's where the premium goes. Eco+ waits until your panels are generating more than the house is consuming, then sends that surplus to the car — no grid electricity, no moral arithmetic. Eco is a softer version that tops up from the grid when needed. If you have panels, this is the charger.

The ecosystem matters too. Pair it with an eddi and you divert surplus to the hot water tank first; pair it with a libbi and you add home battery storage to the loop. There's a 22kW three-phase variant for the rare UK home that supports it, and RFID for 126 users if the driveway is shared. Solar-first buyers looking at this pairing will get more out of the Ohme Home Pro vs Zappi GLO comparison, which pitches the Zappi against the best smart-tariff charger on the market.

Without solar, the case collapses. The app is fine but tariff integration is manual rather than API-driven — the Ohme Home Pro does that job better for £215 less. The on-unit screen from the old Zappi 2.1 is gone; everything happens in the app. £750 for a solar computer with nothing to compute is not a purchase, it's a decoration.

What the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro does differently

The Hypervolt Home 3 Pro is built for the buyer who wants the decision over with. It schedules against smart tariffs, diverts from solar via an included CT clamp, tracks energy, and comes in three interchangeable cover colours if the aesthetic matters. The build is the quiet advantage: IP66 plus IK10 — weatherproof and impact-resistant. That's the toughest rating on any charger in this selection. The 10-metre tethered cable option is the longest you'll find; if your parking spot is awkward, that one spec can settle it on its own.

It's single-phase only at 7.4kW, so anyone with three-phase supply and the ambition to use it should look at the Zappi or the Tesla Wall Connector. The solar integration is present but basic — fine if panels are a side benefit, wrong if they're the reason you're buying. The app works; it doesn't lead its class. UK phone support is real and picks up quickly, which is not nothing. And the three-year warranty extends to five for £100 — worth taking.

On tariffs, neither of them leads

Both chargers support smart-tariff scheduling, but neither is the best tool for it. On Octopus Go or E.ON Next Drive, where the off-peak window is fixed, either will happily fill the car between midnight and five. On Octopus Agile, where prices move every half-hour, the Ohme's API-driven scheduling is a class above either of these. On Octopus Intelligent Go, the supplier manages the charge anyway, and the charger's cleverness matters less.

So: if tariff optimisation is your priority, you're on the wrong comparison page. If solar is the priority, buy the Zappi. If you want a charger that handles tariffs, solar, weather and the occasional knock from a reversing car, the Hypervolt is the one.

The verdict

Buy the myenergi Zappi GLO if:

• You have solar panels, or are installing them within the year
• You want the myenergi ecosystem (eddi, libbi) now or later
• You have three-phase supply and plan to use it

Buy the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro if:

• You want one good charger and no ongoing decisions
• Your parking spot needs a 10-metre cable
• Build quality matters — IP66 + IK10 is the toughest on offer

If the wall is ours and the roof is bare, the Hypervolt goes up. If there are panels on the roof already, the Zappi does — and the £60 is the best sixty quid in the comparison.