Easee One vs Simpson & Partners Home 7

The £160 question — and what it buys

The Easee One at £489 and the Simpson & Partners Home 7 at £649 occupy different corners of the market despite both being 7kW single-phase chargers that will charge your car at the same speed on the same overnight tariff. The £160 gap is not about kilowatts. It is about what you want bolted to the side of your house — and how much you want to pay the electrician who puts it there.

• Easee One — the lightest charger on the market at 1.5 kg, with built-in RCD and lifetime 4G. Designed to minimise install cost, not to impress the neighbours.
• Simpson & Partners Home 7 — UK-made anodised aluminium, premium finishes, a 10-year enclosure warranty, and three-phase capability. Designed for the front of the house.

Install savings versus kerb appeal

The Easee One's strongest argument has nothing to do with charging. Its integrated Type B RCD and open-PEN detection mean the electrician does not need to install those components in your consumer unit — a saving of roughly £100–£200 on labour and parts. Factor that in and the effective cost gap between these two chargers widens to something like £260–£360. That is a meaningful spread.

The Simpson & Partners counters with materials. Its enclosure is anodised aluminium, available in finishes including Accoya wood and Cotswolds Green. If the charger lives on a visible wall — beside the front door, facing the street — this matters more than any spec sheet captures. The Andersen A3 is the usual recommendation for design-conscious buyers, but at £900 it costs £251 more than the Simpson & Partners for a narrower range of finishes and a shorter five-year warranty. That comparison is worth its own page, but the short version: the Simpson & Partners is the Andersen alternative for people who baulk at four figures.

The warranty — read the fine print

Ten years is the headline, and it is the longest enclosure warranty on the UK market. But the word enclosure is doing the heavy lifting. The internal electronics — the bits that schedule your charging, talk to your app, and regulate power — carry a three-year warranty, identical to the Easee One's. If the circuit board fails in year five, the aluminium shell is covered; the repair is not.

This does not make the warranty worthless. Aluminium housings exposed to British weather for a decade is a genuine commitment, and it speaks to build quality. Just know what you are buying: long-term confidence in the casing, standard-length cover on everything inside it.

Connectivity and tariff smarts

Neither charger is a tariff optimiser. The Easee One has scheduled charging through its app, backed by a built-in eSIM with lifetime 4G — useful if your Wi-Fi does not reach the drive. The Simpson & Partners supports Intelligent Octopus Go directly, which hands scheduling to Octopus's platform, and runs on a timer for fixed-window tariffs like Octopus Go and EDF GoElectric.

If you are on a variable tariff like Octopus Agile, neither charger chases half-hourly rates. That job belongs to the Ohme Home Pro at £539 — £50 more than the Easee, £110 less than the Simpson & Partners — and the comparison with the Easee is covered here. On a fixed off-peak window, both the Easee and the Simpson & Partners do the job.

Three-phase — the Simpson & Partners' quiet advantage

The Simpson & Partners offers a 22kW three-phase option. The Easee One is single-phase only. Fewer than 5% of UK homes have a three-phase supply, but if yours does — or if you are installing one as part of a renovation — the Simpson & Partners delivers three times the charging speed. The Wallbox Pulsar Max and myenergi Zappi GLO also offer three-phase at £513 and £599 respectively, but neither matches the Simpson & Partners' build quality or warranty length.

Which to buy

Buy the Easee One if:

• You want the lowest total cost — hardware plus install — for a competent 7kW charger
• Your charger lives out of sight, round the side or in the garage
• You need 4G backup because Wi-Fi does not reach your charging spot

Buy the Simpson & Partners Home 7 if:

• The charger sits on a visible wall and appearance matters to you
• You have or plan a three-phase supply and want 22kW charging
• A 10-year enclosure warranty gives you peace of mind on an exposed installation

For most single-phase households tucking a charger away on a side wall, the Easee One is the more rational purchase. It charges at the same speed, costs £160 less before install savings widen the gap further, and its 4G connectivity is a genuine advantage over Wi-Fi-only rivals. The Simpson & Partners earns its premium when the charger is on show — and when you want something that still looks good on the wall in 2036.