Simpson & Partners Home Series

£From £649

(Without Installation)

WWC OVERALL RATING

TRUST PILOT RATING

4.5/5

BEST FEATURES

  • Tethered or untethered units available
  • Wall-mounted or on a pedestal
  • 10-year enclosure warranty
  • 5-year electronic warranty

Socket Type:

Type 2

Power:

7kW

Charger Type:

Both Tethered and Untethered

Pros

  • Looks fantastic
  • Vehicle-to-Grid functionality
  • Fully customisable
  • Solar compatible

Cons

  • On the pricey side
  • Cable on tethered version can’t be stored away tidily
  • No full smart tariff integration yet
Overview

You have to admire Simpson & Partners as a company: they are totally dedicated to the task of producing home chargers with both form and function. To get an idea of the philosophy, you just have to log on to their website and wonder at the commitment to design when you view the chargers on offer. No corners are cut, and what’s heartening is that this is a British company with an entrepreneurial spirit dedicated to producing a quality product. And so, with the new Home Series Gen V3 you get what you pay for: a nice looking charger that’s built to last (with long guarantees for peace of mind) with plenty of useful functionality that now includes Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and solar capability to make home charging more a pleasure than chore.

We’ll stick our necks out here and say it’s the best in the business. The metal cover is reassuring, and the overall design and shape is pleasing whatever angle you are viewing from. There are 112 colour combinations and you can specify either a metal or wood lid. Each charger has been designed and engineered with longevity and environmental responsibility in mind. Metal front enclosures are used for durability, while lids made from Accoya wood come with a 50-year no-rot guarantee. Most importantly, however, this is a compact charger that won’t dominate your front wall: the surface area is no larger than an A4 sheet of paper. The V3 also features a courtesy light, which is a nice touch, but there is however one slight gripe. If you order a tethered version there’s no way of storing the cable away tidily. Simpson & Partners do provide a hook but there are other chargers where the cable can be hidden. Mostly, we would recommend tethered chargers (if there is a choice), because of the convenience, but we think that if you really want to keep your front wall looking smart, the untethered Home Series charger is the better option. Simpson & Partners, it seems, have prioritised ‘compactness’ in the design, but that has necessitated a compromise on cable storage. The build quality, however, is excellent: all the materials are of high quality and the 10-year enclosure warranty (essentially the unit) and the 5-year electronics warranty are class-leading and that should give you the level of reassurance that it will resist everything the UK climate can throw at it.

The app is nicely done and easy to navigate. It’s useful that there is an online video walkthrough on Simpson & Partners’ (S&P) website. S&P uses its Energy Manager (EM) system to help you charge your car efficiently and safely by automatically adjusting the power consumption between your home and the charger. This feature is often referred to as load management. The Energy Manager comes in two versions: wired and wireless. The Energy Manager works with S&P chargers to prevent overload and nuisance trips. The system also detects how much electricity your home needs and regulates the power to your car accordingly. For example, when you use appliances like an oven, heating, or dryers, it gives more power to your home and less to your car. When your home uses less power, it gives more to your car. The system also enables you to use your excess solar power to charge your car (if you have solar panels and select a Home Plus model). The wired energy manager is compatible with all Home Basic and Home Plus models and is useful if the distance between your meter cupboard and charger is short (less than 10 metres). It also has a lower cost and higher accuracy than the wireless version. The Wireless Energy Manager, however, has one-click pairing technology called Quik Connect for easy set-up and has self-charging where it harvests its own energy from the power cables (no need for batteries). The standard range mode is 65 metres while ‘long range mode’ is 120 metres. The Home Series also uses what is known as ‘LoRa radio technology’, which sounds fancy, but all it means is that it doesn’t require WiFi. To activate the long-range mode you just connect the wireless energy manager to a power source using the USB-C cable. This way, the device does not depend on harvested energy and can send a stronger signal with better range. Unlike many EV chargers that rely on cloud connectivity, Home Series chargers operate effectively even when offline. All schedules and settings are stored locally and accessible via Bluetooth, ensuring consistent smart charging even in the absence of WiFi. In terms of all the other functionality, it does all the stuff you should expect from a smart home charger: you can see your historical energy cost, view charging history, schedule charging for off-peak rates and override if needed. The easy-to-use app allows you to lock the charger cable and mute your status light. Simpson & Partners also highlights the fact that you can name your charger on the app tutorial website page: as we have said, we like the name Kenneth, but it’s up to you.

The truth is, there are cheaper chargers, but no matter. The Home Series Gen V3 is pitched at a market where aesthetics count. If you have an attractive home, it’s no good sticking a plasticky old box on the side of it for the sake of saving £200-£300. Prices for the V3 start from £649 but that is without installation. If you want Simpson & Partners to fit it then you are looking at £1,073 but it could be more depending on the location and nature of the installation. So, it’s not cheap, but that’s not really the point. You are paying for quality both in terms of the product and the service offering.

We’re reviewing the single-phase 7kW untethered and tethered charger, but you can get a 22kW three-phase unit. The tethered option includes 6.8-metre cable and you can either choose a wall-mounted unit or have a pedestal at additional cost. This new Home Series Gen V3 charger is fully AC Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) compatible, enabling users to leverage their EV battery for home energy management. In line with the company’s commitment to future proofing, all customers who purchased a charger from June 2022 onward will have the option to upgrade to V2G functionality via a simple kit, available for £165. Simpson & Partners has also engineered the Home Series with a modular design that allows both hardware and software upgrades. For instance, customers using a V1 charger from three years ago can now and seamlessly upgrade to V3 hardware at a minimal cost. What the Gen V3 charger doesn’t have is full Smart Energy Tariff Integration yet, but Simpson & Partners is currently beta-testing with leading UK energy providers. Of course, you can still schedule charging at off-peak periods to keep bills low but full integration to allow automatic charging during periods when electricity is most cost-effective and environmentally friendly is not there yet.

Single phase 7.3kW AC and Three phase 22kW AC

Tethered and Untethered Type 2 connector

Tethered Cable Length – 6.8 metres

PEN fault protection – Built-in open PEN protection (no need for earth rod)

Scheduler function

Lock function

Tethered mode function

VERDICT

This is a lovely looking charger and the design and build quality is pretty much unrivalled. The plus points are the class-leading warranty, the Vehicle-to-Grid tech, solar integration, but the absence of full smart tariff integration and the fact that the cable on the tethered unit is all on show lets it down a little, but we understand that to achieve the compact size of the Home Series a compromise had to be made. That’s why we would recommend (which we don’t usually do) the untethered version because it’s cleaner in terms of the overall look. The commitment to quality is unquestionable and if you are looking for a charger that looks the part, does pretty much everything a smart charger should do, along with a quality service then you won’t go far wrong with this.

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Key Features

  • Tethered or untethered units available
  • Wall-mounted or on a pedestal
  • 10-year enclosure warranty
  • 5-year electronic warranty

Key Features

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  • Ability to get rewards
  • Three-year warranty

Key Features

  • Tethered or untethered units available
  • In-house installation in two hours
  • Five-year warranty

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  • Approved national or local installers on website
  • Three-year warranty
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