GivEnergy EV Charger vs EO Mini Pro 3: Battery Brain vs Tiny Titan

The Battery Brain vs the Tiny Titan

These two chargers won't appear on most shortlists together — and that's precisely why this comparison is worth writing. The GivEnergy EV Charger and the EO Mini Pro 3 are both specialist tools designed for specific situations. The GivEnergy is built around home battery storage, letting you charge your Tesla from energy you banked hours earlier. The EO Mini Pro 3, meanwhile, is the smallest home charger on the UK market — roughly the size of an A5 notebook — making it the go-to option when wall space is at an absolute premium.

If you're choosing between them, chances are you have either a home battery system or a tight installation spot (perhaps both). Neither charger is trying to be the best all-rounder — that crown belongs to units like the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro or the Ohme Home Pro, as highlighted by viablepower.co.uk and evenergyhub.com. But within their niches, both are genuinely compelling. Let's dig into where each one earns its keep.

In a nutshell:

• GivEnergy EV Charger (£478): The cheapest way to charge your EV from a home battery — turning stored solar or off-peak energy into free miles.
• EO Mini Pro 3 (£699): The smallest charger you can buy, with CT clamp solar diversion included and triple connectivity options as standard.

Spec Comparison

Smart Tariff Integration

This is where the EO Mini Pro 3 pulls ahead convincingly. It ships with smart tariff presets for popular UK EV tariffs including Octopus Go (7.5p/kWh between 00:30 and 04:30) and EDF Go Electric. Set your tariff once in the EO app and it handles the scheduling automatically. There's also an interesting tie-up with British Gas: if you're on Hive Power+, you get 25% of your charging costs credited back — a genuine saving if you're already in the Hive ecosystem.

The GivEnergy charger, by contrast, has limited smart tariff integration. You can schedule charging windows manually, so you could set it to run during Octopus Go's off-peak slot, but it won't dynamically respond to variable-rate tariffs like Octopus Agile. If you're the sort of driver who wants their charger to chase the cheapest half-hour slots automatically, neither charger is ideal — but the EO is noticeably closer to that goal. As tinyeco.com notes, smart functionality and tariff optimisation are now key differentiators in the UK market, and the GivEnergy's basic app leaves it trailing here.

Solar Diversion and Battery-to-EV Charging

Here the tables turn dramatically. Both chargers offer solar diversion — routing surplus PV generation straight into your car rather than exporting it for a few pence per kWh. The EO Mini Pro 3 includes a CT clamp as standard, which monitors your home's energy flow and diverts excess solar to the car. It works, though reviews suggest it isn't as sophisticated as the Zappi's ECO+ mode, as noted by mackie-electrical.co.uk.

The GivEnergy charger does solar diversion too, but its real party trick is battery-to-EV charging. If you have a home battery — GivEnergy's own or any compatible system — the charger can pull stored energy into your car. That means you can soak up cheap overnight electricity (say, 7.5p/kWh on Octopus Go) into your home battery, then discharge it into your Tesla the following afternoon. Or capture solar energy at midday while you're at work, then use it to charge your car when you get home at six. No other charger at this price point offers this level of whole-home energy integration. The GivEnergy monitoring portal ties your battery, solar panels and EV charger into a single dashboard, giving you genuine visibility over every kilowatt-hour flowing through your home.

Without a home battery, however, this advantage evaporates entirely. The GivEnergy charger becomes a basic 7kW unit with a limited app — functional but unremarkable.

App, Connectivity and Reliability

Connectivity is another area where the EO Mini Pro 3 outguns the GivEnergy. The EO offers three connection methods as standard — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet — with an optional 4G add-on for homes where the Wi-Fi signal doesn't reach the driveway. Ethernet is particularly welcome: it's the most reliable connection you can get, immune to the Wi-Fi dropouts that plague many smart chargers. As topcharger.co.uk and other reviewers have noted, connectivity reliability is one of the most underrated factors in charger satisfaction.

The GivEnergy relies solely on Wi-Fi. If your router is at the front of the house and your charger is on a side wall, you may need a Wi-Fi extender — an extra cost and an extra point of failure. The GivEnergy app itself is functional for monitoring energy flows across your whole system, but as a standalone EV charger app it's basic compared to the polished interfaces from Ohme or Hypervolt.

Build Quality and Design

The EO Mini Pro 3's headline feature is its size: at just 215 × 140 × 100mm and 2.5 kg, it's genuinely tiny. If you're mounting a charger in a narrow side passage, inside a garage with limited wall space, or on a listed building where visual impact matters, the EO is hard to beat. It's also available in both tethered and untethered configurations, giving you flexibility if you have multiple EVs with different cable preferences.

The GivEnergy is larger at 320 × 220 × 115mm but still compact by charger standards. Crucially, it carries an IP65 rating — fully dust-tight and protected against water jets from any direction — compared to the EO's IP54, which only guards against splashing water. If your charger will be fully exposed to British weather with no overhead cover, the GivEnergy's superior weatherproofing is worth noting. Both chargers are tethered with 5-metre cables, though the EO also offers an untethered socket option.

Price and Value

The GivEnergy is £221 cheaper at the unit level — a significant gap. For someone with a home battery, that's extraordinary value: you're getting battery-to-EV charging and whole-home energy management for under £500. Without a battery, it's still one of the cheapest OZEV-approved smart chargers available, though you'd be sacrificing smart tariff depth and connectivity options.

The EO Mini Pro 3 at £699 is harder to justify on features alone. You're essentially paying a premium for miniaturisation and connectivity breadth. The British Gas Power+ cashback sweetens the deal if you're eligible, but for most buyers, the price puts it in direct competition with the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro — which, as topcharger.co.uk notes, offers more features for a similar outlay. The EO's value proposition is strongest when its compact size solves a genuine installation problem that other chargers simply can't.

Who Should Buy Which?

Buy the GivEnergy EV Charger if:

• You have a home battery system (GivEnergy or otherwise) and want to charge your EV from stored energy
• You're building a whole-home energy system with solar, battery and EV charging under one dashboard
• Budget is a priority and you want a competent 7kW charger for under £500
• Your charger will be exposed to the elements and you need IP65 weatherproofing
• You value energy self-sufficiency over smart tariff automation

Buy the EO Mini Pro 3 if:

• Wall space is severely limited and you need the smallest possible charger
• You want Ethernet connectivity for rock-solid reliability
• You're on British Gas / Hive Power+ and can claim the 25% charging cost credit
• You need smart tariff presets for Octopus Go or EDF Go Electric
• You want the option of an untethered socket for multi-vehicle flexibility

Our recommendation: For the general buyer without a home battery or space constraints, neither of these is the optimal choice — you'd be better served by an all-rounder like the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro or Ohme Home Pro. But within their specialisms, both excel. If you have a home battery, the GivEnergy at £478 is a genuinely brilliant purchase that unlocks capabilities no other charger at this price can match. If you're wrestling with a cramped installation spot or need bombproof Ethernet connectivity, the EO Mini Pro 3 solves real problems elegantly. Choose the charger that matches your constraint, not the one with the longer feature list.

Read our full GivEnergy EV Charger review or EO Mini Pro 3 review.

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