Andersen A3 vs EO Mini Pro 3

The £377 question is about your front wall, not your car

The Andersen A3 costs £900. The EO Mini Pro 3 costs £523. The £377 gap buys no extra kilowatts — both are single-phase, tethered Type 2 chargers delivering around 7kW. What it buys is a different relationship between the charger and the house it sits on.

• Andersen A3 — 247 colour and finish combinations, a hidden cable that retracts into the body, anodised aluminium, 7-year warranty. A charger designed to be seen.
• EO Mini Pro 3 — the smallest mainstream charger on the UK market at 215 × 140 × 100 mm. Smart enough, cheap enough, small enough to disappear beside a doorframe.

What the Andersen's £900 actually pays for

Not software. The A3's app handles scheduling and supports Intelligent Octopus Go and OVO Charge Anytime, but it is competent rather than clever — no half-hourly tariff chasing, no 4G fallback. The Ohme Home Pro at £539 does more with your electricity.

What the £900 pays for is build and finish. The hidden cable — 5.5 metres, retracted inside the unit when not in use — is unique on the UK market. No dangling Type 2 lead, no hook, no cable holster. The anodised aluminium front and the option to colour-match to brick, render, or wood are genuine differentiators. And the 7-year warranty is the longest available, more than double the EO's 3 years.

The honest test: is the charger visible from the street or the front door? If yes — if it is part of the face of the house — the Andersen earns its money the way a good front door does. If the charger lives inside a garage or down a side alley, you are paying for aesthetics nobody sees. For a fuller look at the Andersen against a more direct rival on materials and warranty, the Andersen A3 vs Simpson & Partners Home 7 comparison is worth reading.

Where the EO Mini Pro 3 makes its case

Size. At 2.5 kg and roughly the footprint of a paperback, the EO fits where other chargers cannot — narrow garages, recessed walls, beside a boiler flue. If your installer has flagged clearance issues, the EO is often the only option that works without relocating the mount.

It also has connectivity options the Andersen lacks. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and an Ethernet port come as standard; 4G is an optional add-on. In a garage with thick walls and a weak Wi-Fi signal, the wired Ethernet fallback is worth more than any app feature. The A3 offers Wi-Fi only.

One caveat: EO is retiring its own app and migrating users to the ev.energy platform. The charger you buy today will not be managed by the software in the older marketing materials. The ev.energy app handles Octopus Go and EDF GoElectric scheduling adequately, but the transition is worth knowing about.

British Gas customers get a specific reason to look at the EO: the Hive Power+ version credits back 25% of charging costs on the British Gas EV Power tariff. That structural cashback is locked to the British Gas ecosystem, but inside it, no other charger matches the ongoing saving.

Neither charger is the default — and that matters

Most buyers comparing these two are not choosing between them so much as choosing whether either one earns its price over the field. The Tesla Wall Connector at £475 offers 7.4kW, a longer cable, and native Tesla app integration for less than the EO. The Hypervolt Home 3 Pro at £625 gives you a 10-metre cable and IP66 weatherproofing. Both are stronger all-rounders if you have no particular space constraint or design ambition.

The Andersen and the EO earn their place only when a specific physical requirement — appearance or size — overrides the spec sheet. That is not a criticism. It is the clearest way to decide.

The verdict

Buy the Andersen A3 if:

• The charger is visible from the street or front of the house and you want it to look deliberate, not industrial
• You value a 7-year warranty and aluminium construction over saving £377
• You are already on Intelligent Octopus Go or OVO Charge Anytime, where the A3's smart integration is sufficient

Buy the EO Mini Pro 3 if:

• Wall space is tight — a narrow garage, a recessed mount, a location where standard-sized chargers do not fit
• You are a British Gas customer and the Hive Power+ 25% cashback applies to you
• You want Ethernet as a wired fallback in a location where Wi-Fi is unreliable

For most buyers who do not have a specific size or aesthetic constraint, neither charger is the strongest recommendation at its price. The Tesla Wall Connector or the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro will serve better. But if you need the smallest box on the market, the EO is the answer. And if you want the only charger that disappears into the architecture of a house, the Andersen is the only one making that argument — at £900, it had better be.