Best home electric car chargers: EV wallboxes rated by owners

The annual Driver Power survey doesn’t just collect the public’s views and opinions about cars but as electric motoring becomes more prevalent, Driver Power also rates one of your primary points of contact with an EV: your home charging equipment.

Nine of the key players in the domestic electric car charger market received enough responses from owners to be included in this year’s survey and a fairly broad spread of scores shows that while some brands are getting things very right, some surprisingly big names still aren’t meeting the expectations of their customers.

Wallbox EV chargers were scored on the installation process, style, charging speed, ease of use, build quality, and reliability, as well as your interactions with the brand’s customer service, and the smartphone apps that let you dictate charging times and other functions. This last category resulted in some particularly low scores, making it an obvious area for improvement in future.

Best home EV chargers

Below are the top electric car home charging options according to the people who have these units installed…

Easee – 95.30%

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Easee by name, Easee by nature – it’s something of an easy win for this wallbox charger, recording the best scores for the installation process, ease of use, build quality, and reliability, as well as the accompanying smartphone app. It wasn’t out of the top three in any category either – it’s beaten by the Hypervolt and Wallbox on charging speed, but a score of 89.12% here is hardly bad. Respondents were happy enough with the way it looks too while a second place in customer service closes out an impressive performance in every area.

Hypervolt – 93.18%

10

A couple of percentage points behind Easee, Hypervolt’s home charger still comes highly commended by Driver Power respondents. It took overall wins in the style and charging speed categories, the latter rated nearly 5% better than the second-placed Wallbox. Its relative gulf to the Easee can be explained by a ninth-place finish (albeit still a decent 89.53% score) for ease of use, and only fifth place for its smartphone app, with a score around 9% lower than Easee in this category.

Zappi – 91.22%

10

Zappi has a cheerful name and apparently cheerful customer service personnel too, since the brand scored a win in this category, narrowly ahead of Easee. It didn’t really fall down in any area unlike the Hypervolt above, but middle-table scores for style and charging speed (it’s definitely not as modern-looking as the Easee or Hypervolt) offset otherwise strong performances in every category.

Wallbox – 89.03%

10

Not the most imaginative name perhaps, but Wallbox does benefit in the way Hoover or Biro do given most people call these home charging systems “wallbox” chargers to start with. It’s the first on the list to score under 90% overall and the first not to get any first-place results in any category, but Wallbox was second overall in charging speed. Its lowest position was seventh for build quality, but its lowest actual scores were 84.87% for style, still enough for fourth, and 84.20% for the smartphone app – amazingly, enough for third place, suggesting brands still have some way to go in both visual appeal and convenience.

EO – 88.65%

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The EO might have gained an extra position in this list had it not fallen down badly on its smartphone app, with a score of just over 64% putting it only above the distinctly average 52% rating of the BP/Chargemaster in this area. In contrast, EO’s home charger, which looks a little like a subwoofer for your home PC (enough for a third place for style), scored best for the ease of use of the charger itself, with 95.17% and a second place in this category. With a better app, the user experience might be up with the Easee.

Ohme – 87.65%

10

One percentage point behind the EO overall, Ohme finished solidly mid-table in most categories, and even its two lowest positions, ease of use and reliability, had respectable overall percentage scores, 90.68% for the former and 88.76% for the latter. It’s just a shame for Ohme that its best placing, fourth for its smartphone app, was an area with such low standards to start with, so its 82% score only looks better by comparison. The charger is small and unobtrusively styled, though.

Pod Point – 86.08%

10

Pod Point might be one of the better-known charger suppliers but that hasn’t helped it here. For a start, it achieved the worst score of the nine in one of the key areas you want a home charger to perform – charging speed – though respondents do at least like the way it’s put together, with a fourth-place finish for build quality and an admirable second for reliability, behind only the Easee. Like almost everyone else, Pod Point’s smartphone app is unimpressive, with a 78.68% score, and it finished only seventh for both style and customer service.

Rolec – 80.44%

10

There’s a big jump down in percentage score for the Rolec, reflecting some very disappointing results in several categories. It finished last of the nine chargers for the installation process, build quality and reliability – which doesn’t bode well for a device that lives outside – and figures in the low 70% range for style and customer service aren’t great either. Like most of its rivals, the smartphone app doesn’t save things, but mid-table results for charging speed and ease of use mean you at least don’t have to spend much time dealing with it – providing it’s working.

BP Pulse/Chargemaster – 78.02%

10

The BP Pulse/Chargemaster’s result would be poor for an unknown startup brand, but since its decision to pull out of the retail home charger market, its scores have suffered significantly. Its 52% score for the smartphone app seems generous considering the service has been closed entirely, but the BP Pulse was also bottom of the barrel for style (69.04%) and for customer service (64.54%), and not that much above bottom in the other categories – only a third place and 94.18% for ease of use bucks the trend.

Now that you know the best home chargers, why not read the results for the best public charging providers...