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Ohme Home Pro: Two-minute review
As electric vehicles (EVs) become increasingly popular, home chargers like the Ohme Home Pro are an investment that many people will need to consider. That’s the situation I found myself in, and after over five months of using the Ohme Home Pro, I’m incredibly impressed with what a difference it can make – especially to my electricity bills.
Like most people who have an EV but without a dedicated wall charger, I used to use a slow charger, sometimes affectionately called a granny charger, which was plugged into a standard plug socket in my garage to charge up my Hyundai Ioniq Electric car. This wasn’t ideal, as from a wall socket I could only charge at 2.3kW. Because my Ioniq has a relatively small battery (28kWh), this would mean it would take about 12 hours to fully charge from almost empty. Fine for charging overnight, but useless if you need to quickly top up the battery before a trip.
It also meant I couldn’t make use of my electricity supplier’s off-peak EV charging, so I was paying around £8 each time to charge the car. Most importantly of all, these slow chargers are not supposed to be used regularly – they are mainly for when you’re at a location that doesn’t have an EV charger (hence the ‘granny charger’ name, as it can be used when visiting relatives who don’t have an EV). While I made sure I was charging as safely as possible, I was keen to stop relying on slow charging for too long.
So, when Ohme partnered up with Currys to offer its chargers through the electronics retailer, I saw this as the best chance yet for EV chargers to go mainstream in the UK, and I was keen to try out one of the chargers.
Currys, like other retailers and energy suppliers (such as Octopus) who sell Ohme’s chargers, is selling the Ohme ePod for £949 and the Ohme Home Pro (which I review here) for £999.
Both include standard installation, which is a must, as they need a professional to connect it to your home’s power safely. You may find the chargers on sale for less, but these will be trade prices and will not include installation. If you buy one of these, you’ll need to pay a professional for installation separately, which might end up costing just as much, or even more.
Including installation in the overall price and selling it via retailers like Currys makes things a lot simpler, as you can order the charger and the installation process will be handled without you needing to do anything else other than give Ohme information about your home, EV and where you park your vehicle.
You provide these details via a form, and all being well you’ll be able to then book a standard installation, which Ohme will arrange with a local installer. Depending on some of your answers you may need to have a non-standard installation, which will cost more. There will also be cases where an installation cannot be performed.
When picking between the Ohme ePod and the Home Pro, the £50 difference means its difficult not to recommend most people to go for the Home Pro. Not only does it come with a colour screen that gives you information and makes it easier to set up charges from the device itself, but it also comes with a tethered 5m cable (which can be upgraded to 8m for an extra cost). The cable has a Type 2 connector, which makes it compatible with most electric cars in the UK.
The ePod has a more compact design with dimensions of 230mm (H) x 140mm (W) x 100 mm (D), compared to the 170mm (H) x 200mm (W) x 100mm (D) dimensions of the Home Pro.
The ePod is less wide, though taller, making it a good choice for installing where there’s limited space – but otherwise I’d strongly recommend paying £50 more for the Home Pro, if only because the tethered cable is so much more convenient to quickly charge your car, rather than having to take out a charging cable and hook it up to both the charger and the car each time.
Installation and setup
Having selected the Home Pod Pro and filled out the form, Ohme confirmed the installation quickly. The installation happened two weeks later with an installer from Plug In Stations.
Depending on your location and other factors, a different installation company may be used, but the chap from Plug In Stations was excellent – talking me through the process and quickly installing and testing the charger with the minimum of fuss or disruption. It took about an hour overall, and afterwards I had a cleanly installed charger in a position I was able to easily get to to charge my car.
The installer then showed me the Ohme app and talked me through the features, and connected the app to my energy supplier. This is an essential step, and allows you to take advantage of the smartest features of the charger – as long as you’re with a supported energy supplier.
Octopus, the supplier I am with, is partnered with Ohme, so once my account was linked up through both the Ohme and Octopus apps on my phone, I was able to switch to the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, one of the specially-designed options for customers with electric vehicles and chargers.
While some EV-specific tariffs simply give you a block of off-peak charging every day (usually late at night and early morning), Intelligent Octopus Go communicates to the Ohme charger via the charger’s built-in 4G internet connection (you’ll need to have a decent signal where the charger is installed, which you’re asked about when you initially sign up for the installation).
All the difficult configuration was performed by the installer. I just had to download the Ohme app on my smartphone and enter in details about my EV and tariff.
One thing to bear in mind is that the 4G connection is free for the first three years of use. Once that’s finished you’ll be charged – Ohme have stated that it’ll be around £2 a month and the company will work to keep that charge low.
While £2 might not seem like a lot, it will impact the overall cost efficiency of the Ohme Home Pro. If you don’t want to pay, you can use the Ohme Home Pro as a ‘dumb’ charger, and set the times manually to charge off-peak, but this isn’t ideal as it means you’ll miss out on many of the best features. It’s a shame that there’s no option to connect the Ohme Home Pro to your home Wi-Fi, as that could have solved that issue.
Using a data connection rather than Wi-Fi does mean that you can still use the Ohme Home Pro’s smart features even if your Wi-Fi goes down, which is a welcome feature – it’s just a shame that after three years you’re going to have to pay for the privilege.
First charge
Once everything was set up, I plugged in my car to check that everything was working. By default, Ohme holds off charging your car until your tariff’s off-peak period starts, which is often late at night/early in the morning.
You can override this by pressing the ‘Max Charge’ button, which will charge your car using the maximum 7.4 kW charge speeds. This is handy for when you want to quickly charge your car, and it allowed me to charge my EV from near empty to full in four hours – a big leap from the 12 hours it would usually take.
During the charge, I could see how much energy was being put into my car – and this information is also shown on the Ohme Home Pro’s screen. The Ohme Home Pro instantly figured out when there would be less demand on the power grid in my area and on the app showed me a schedule. This involved charging the battery incrementally over the low-demand periods, rather than charging solidly until the battery is full.
This obviously extends the time it takes to charge the battery, but by setting the time you need the battery to be fully charged by, the Ohme Home Pro should take that into account and make sure that when you need it, the battery will be charged.
This is, again, set via the app in the main screen. You choose how much charge to add (handy if you want to only charge your battery to 80% to help preserve the lifespan of the battery), and what time you need it by (I usually set it to 8:00am, so my car is ready for my drive to work).
Ohme promises that to meet the goals you set it may charge during peak times – but you’ll still be charged the off-peak price (as long as your tariff supports dynamic charging), which is good for your peace of mind. Throughout the months I’ve been using the Ohme Home Pro, my car has always been fully charged by the time I’ve set. However, the app continues to notify me saying that it won’t meet the target I have set and it’s charging at full speed.
This was worrying the first time I got it, but so far I’ve never had the Ohme Home Pro miss a target. Either that means the full speed charging is doing the job to make up the shortfall, or the app is incorrect. I believe it’s more likely to be the latter as it seems to always send me the notification, and I think that’s due to my EV’s model not being fully supported by the app, so it’s not correctly reporting how much battery is left to charge.
People with supported EVs, or newer models, will likely not encounter this, and to be honest once I realised that it didn’t impact my charging, it wasn’t a concern.
You can also set whether you want cabin preconditioning on or off. Many EVs, including mine, allow you to set a temperature for the cat’s cabin and a time you want it to reach that temperature. When it’s plugged in, the car will then heat up (or cool down) using its climate controls. It’s a wonderful feature, especially in the winter months as it means you get into a nice warm car, and this can also help increase the range of the EV.
Preconditioning is handled by the car, so you need to turn it on there – the option in the Ohme app simply means the charger knows you’re using the feature, so even if the battery is fully charged, the Ohme Home Pro will continue to send power to your car so that the preconditioning feature kicks in (preconditioning only works if your EV is plugged in, so if the Ohme Home Pro were to completely stop sending power once your battery is fully charged, your car might not turn on preconditioning as it thinks it’s no longer plugged into a power source).
This is a thoughtful addition to the app, and one I made use of a lot. One thing to note is that preconditioning the EV during peak times could mean the overall price of your charge increases. Saying that, it doesn’t seem to impact the price of my charges, even though I set the temperature target for a few hours after the off peak period ends.
Living with the charger
After living with the Ohme Home Pro for around five months now I can safely say that it has made a big impact in my day-to-day life.
The ease of plugging in my car to charge is a huge benefit – before, I was having to go into my garage to plug in the ‘granny’ charger, close up the garage and then wait 12 hours for the car to charge. Now, I just have to uncoil the charging cable next to the Ohme Home Pro in my drive and plug it into my car. The smart charging features of the Ohme Home Pro means that I don’t have to do anything else, and I know that the next morning my car will be fully charged, and that I’ll have been using the cheapest rates.
The impact to my monthly bills has also been noticeable. Before, it was costing me around £8 every time to charge up my car (giving me around 120 miles) – and while that was still less than what I was paying when I had a petrol car, it did add up over the month.
With the Ohme Home Pro charger, and moving to the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, it now costs me around £1.50 to fully charge my car (the Ohme app has a handy section where you can see how much previous charges have cost you). Of course, this will vary depending on how much charge I need to add, and this is also while charging overnight during off-peak hours – charging outside of that schedule will cost the same as my original charges.
If you don’t have a supported tariff, then the money you save by using the Ohme Home Pro might not be as noticeable, so it’s well worth checking with your energy provider to see if they support off peak EV charging. Suppliers like Octopus also support more dynamic prices depending on the energy demands of your area, and this can further lower prices.
By doing a bit of research and setting your charge schedule and tariff appropriately, you could find the Ohme Home Pro helps lower your energy bills (especially if you use the off-peak hours to run other energy-intensive appliances such as dishwashers) substantially – and after a while, the initial £999 outlay will pay for itself. Having a wall charger professionally installed on your property could even have a positive impact on the value of your home as EV ownership increases – though of course this also means that if you were to move house you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.
By using the smart features of the Ohme Home Pro for dynamic charging, not only are you saving money, but you’re also helping to reduce the load on the powergrid, and hopefully that also results in fewer emissions. When paired with an energy supplier (like Octopus) that uses renewable energy, it can make you feel a lot better about your carbon footprint in the world.
Overall, the Ohme Home Pro is an excellent product that won’t be for everyone, but if it fits your needs and situation (you have an electric vehicle, off-road parking and a compatible tariff), then it could make a hugely positive impact on your life. While lower bills are perhaps the biggest benefit, the knowledge that you’re charging your EV in a relatively sustainable and eco-friendly way is also a major boon.
Should you buy the Ohme Home Pro?
Buy it if
Don’t buy it if
How I tested the Ohme Home Pro
I had the Ohme Home Pro professionally installed via Ohme’s standard process. Once installed, I use the Ohme Home Pro on a weekly basis for five months to charge my Hyundai Ioniq electric car. I used both the Ohme app and on-device controls to select charge settings.
First reviewed April 2025
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matthew.hanson@futurenet.com (Matt Hanson)
