Zaptec Go 2 vs Indra Smart LUX: the future or the wall it sits on?

The future or the wall it sits on?

Two chargers aimed at buyers who've thought about this for more than an afternoon. The Zaptec Go 2 at £500 is a bet on what's coming — V2G, certified metering, connectivity that doesn't need your router. The Indra Smart LUX at £615 is a bet on what's already true — that a charger lives outside, gets knocked, and needs a cable attached to it.

The shortest version:

• Zaptec Go 2 — untethered, V2G-ready, free 4G, MID-approved meter. A forward bet.
• Indra Smart LUX — tethered 6m cable, IP67 + IK10, UK-built, broad tariff coverage. A present-tense charger.

Is the Indra's £115 premium worth it?

Depends what you're buying with it. On raw charging, no — both deliver 7.4kW single-phase and will fill a Tesla overnight without drama. The Zaptec Go 2 pulls ahead on paper with 22kW three-phase, but fewer than 5% of UK homes can use that, so for most readers it's a line on a spec sheet.

Where the £115 actually goes is the physical charger. The Indra Smart LUX is 78mm deep — the thinnest tethered smart unit on the UK market — with IP67 and IK10 ratings that mean it will survive immersion and a determined knock from a reversing wing mirror. The Zaptec is IP54: weatherproof, not weather-armoured. If the charger is going on an exposed wall facing the weather, or somewhere it'll get bumped, the Indra earns its price in the first winter.

The other £115 goes on the cable. Tethered means you walk out, unclip, plug in. Untethered means you keep a cable in the boot or on a hook and handle it every time. For a single Tesla at a single house, tethered is nicer. The Zaptec forces the socket question on you.

When the Zaptec's £500 is the smarter spend

Three scenarios make the Zaptec Go 2 the correct answer.

First, if more than one car uses the charger and they take different connectors — or might, in future — untethered is the only sensible choice. The Indra Smart LUX is locked to a 6m Type 2 cable; the Zaptec takes whatever cable the car came with.

Second, connectivity. The Zaptec has 4G built in, no subscription, forever. The Indra's 4G module is roughly £250 extra. If your driveway is a dead zone for the house Wi-Fi — and a lot are — that gap closes the price difference and then some. For tariff scheduling to work reliably, the charger needs a connection it can count on.

Third, V2G. If you believe the UK will have a meaningful bidirectional market within the charger's five-year warranty, the Zaptec is the only AC home unit certified for it. The MID-approved meter also matters here: when you're selling electricity back to the grid, the readings need to be legally defensible. The Indra doesn't have that. If you don't believe in V2G — and many sensible people don't, yet — that paragraph collapses and you're paying £95 more than the Easee One for features you won't use.

On tariffs, neither leads convincingly

Both chargers are OCPP 1.6-compliant and both claim tariff integration. The Indra is more specific — 1,000+ tariffs, including Agile-style half-hourly scheduling baked into the Indra app. The Zaptec leans on third-party platforms to deliver the same. Neither matches what the Ohme Home Pro does natively on Octopus Agile for £535. If tariff-chasing is your primary reason to buy, the Ohme is the better spend than either of these.

For buyers on a fixed window — Octopus Go or E.ON Next Drive — both chargers handle scheduling competently. The choice reverts to hardware.

The verdict

Buy the Zaptec Go 2 if:

• You want V2G-ready hardware and believe the ecosystem is coming
• The charger will serve more than one car or more than one connector
• Your Wi-Fi doesn't reach the driveway and you need 4G without a subscription

Buy the Indra Smart LUX if:

• You want a tethered cable and the daily ease of not handling one
• The charger faces weather or lives somewhere it'll get knocked
• You value UK manufacturing and built-in SPD/PEN protection for the install

If it's going on my wall, it's the Indra Smart LUX. V2G is a real thing that may or may not arrive; IP67 and a cable you don't have to fetch are real things that matter every day. The Zaptec Go 2 is the right charger for a narrower, more speculative buyer — and for that buyer, it's the only choice. For everyone else, the £115 buys a better charger, not just a different one.