5 Best EV Home Chargers on a Budget in 2023

So my life is pretty much over unless I have one of these the charger and look Boom. The universe makes sense again cancel my therapist. Now, when it comes to electric cars, things are not that much different and since the best most convenient and the cheapest way to charge your electric car is at home. Your home charger is the biggest most important purchase you will ever make for your EV. But how much do you need to spend on your home charger and what Chargers are the best on the budget, meaning it will charge your car without burning down? Your house is always a nice perk and guess what I have the best person in the world: no joke to answer the question hell be here in just one second and were going to start right now: Music, welcome to E4 electric and no, you cant just buy The cheapest charger on Amazon and call it a day its one of those things when you cannot afford to buy cheap. It is a high voltage electric device that can cause some big trouble, including burning down your house, but it doesnt mean you have to spend a fortune on it either. So what to do what to do and what to do is to ask the best expert in the world in electric car charging Tom Maloney, who is a veteran EV journalist and a host of The Biggest EV charging Channel on YouTube appropriately named state of charge.

Now, when I asked Tom to come on and talk to us about the top five most affordable home Chargers, he told me that the minimum budget for anything he can vouch for, would have to be around 5 500 dollars all right, fair enough before I bring Tom In to walk us through all five Chargers, a quick reminder that this video is brought to you by electron look one of the biggest challenges with owning an EV is finding convenient and reliable ways of charging it thats. Why electron is pioneering great charging solutions that let you charge where you want when you want, regardless of your charging standard like their ccs to Tesla adapter, which lets Tesla drivers charge up to 300 amps at any CCS fast charger across the country, with the charging rate Of up to 150 kilowatts, it can allow for up to 180 miles of range per hour, get one today using the discount code in the description of this video. Alright Tom lets talk about affordable home Chargers, but before we get to the list, what makes an affordable but also good home charger so on the affordable, Alex. You know, theres. If you look at the market now theres, so many charges out there that cost 600. 700. 800, I took a look at 500 and less. I consider that affordable because thats on the low end of a charger that is relatively high, powered uh level, two charger. What makes a charger good well theres, a lot of things that it should be built.

Well, it should have a good warranty. It should um be safety certified. It should have a nice long, cable, a good, strong, well made connector and a nice connector holster theres a lot of things that I use when I judge. If a charger is a good charger or not all right now, I know you test almost all of them yourself and you put them literally through hell, but the most entertaining part of your videos is what you call a deep freeze when you take the charger and Put it in the freezer uh and then leave it there overnight, but uh. You know humor me this uh. What uh? What is the a good boy from New Jersey, like yourself doing with a commercial ice cream freezer, and what do you use it for when youre? Not testing home Chargers, so I actually bought this just to freeze the Chargers um. You know many freezers only go down to like zero degrees, Fahrenheit, but commercial ice cream chests go way below that, because ice cream has to be kept way below freezing. Otherwise it gets soft, so I actually went out and bought a commercial ice cream freezer. So I could do these cable, deep freeze tests and the goal is for me to get the the charger down to about negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours. Then, to see how well the cable bends, because this is really for people that live in the northern states, Alex if you live in San, Diego or Southern Texas.

You dont have to worry about this too much, but in areas where its going to get down way below freezing overnight think about it. If your vehicle is parked outside and your chargers out outside some peoples, Chargers are mounted outside. When you get to your car in the morning, you go to unplug it and youve got like a frozen rope and the cable wont even bend. So I do this to see how pliable and how easy the cable is going to be to work with on those really cold nights. Every time you do it, man its always entertaining, but lets get to the list and are these in any particular order? No, no. I just threw out you know you, you said give me give me some of your top picks for good Chargers that are affordable and thats. What I gave you all right lets get going with number one. Okay, so number one were going to talk about the grizzle e classic. The grizzly classic is a 40 amp non smart charger. Now, theres Chargers or smart Chargers means they typically come with an app and theyre Wi Fi enabled – and you can manipulate things through your app. You can start and stop a charging session. You could check out data, but not a lot of people are really concerned with that. Some most people just want the charger to just charge their car and and thats it and be reliable, and the grizzly does that its its very well made its made of uh its its got a really thick outer aluminum casing.

Most Chargers are plastic these days, even though some of the plastics strong this uh. This is an incredibly tough uh thing that Grizzly actually drove over it with cars and everything to prove how tough it was uh and its its a really well made uh charger uh. Its got a nice long, cable and its kind of like the no nonsense. If you just want something thats going to be reliable and affordable and work, then this is definitely one of your considerations all right now. The next one is, I believe, its amazing Eve. Past yeah, so you know um. The amazing e is a line of portable chargers, theyre small Chargers, theyre portable from a Clipper Creek and uh. So the amazing e fest is a 32 amp portable charger, its very small, very lightweight. You can carry it with you. It plugs into a Nema 1450 Outlet, itll deliver uh up to uh 7.7 kilowatts and its good for a portable charging unit. Now there are competitive units out there on the market that cost less than this. Most of them are not safety certified most of them. Dont have good warranties. I like this unit because its really Built Tough and its going to last a long time and Id rather see people spend a couple dollars more, but get a really good well made product. Now this is a really good, well made product and its available for around 400, and you know portable uh Chargers.

You dont have to have it mounted on the wall and you wired. It just requires a 240 Outlet, correct, thats, correct you know, um. I tend to recommend for your home charging use the charger youre going to use every day. I like to see that hardwired, because it eliminates a point of failure. An outlet is a point of failure, but that doesnt work for everybody and what I like about these portable units are. Is you can take them on the road for different places? So you could charge at your house. Some people have second homes here in New Jersey like down the Jersey Shore, or they have a a winter home up in Vermont or Connecticut and uh they have all they have to do is install an outlet there and plug in. I have friends that have EVS that installed out lets say at their parents house, their parents live 80 miles away, so they just had to install the outlet they didnt have to buy the charging equipment because they just unplugged their charger and go to their parents house Plug it in when theyre there, and then they can, they have enough juice to get home all right now. Uh number three is the Tesla mobile connector yeah, so Tesla makes outstanding charging equipment. I I almost think you know I love Tesla vehicles. I think Tesla makes really good electric vehicles. I almost think theyre charging equipment compared to other charging equipment is better than their cars are better compared to other EVS.

Tesla really makes good charging all of it and were not going to talk about all of their Chargers. Here today, but two two out of the three, so we talked about the mobile connector, the Tesla mobile connector is a dual voltage connector, which means it can charge from 120 volt Source, regular household Outlet here in North America, or it can charge from a 240 volt Outlet Nema 1450 Outlet so uh, depending on what type of Outlet you have available, you can use this on either uh Supply and uh its a very good small lightweight unit. It comes with a 20 foot. Cable, nice cable comes in a nice handy carrying case and for 230 dollars is what Tesla charges for this its a ridiculously good deal, um its its. It may be one of the best deals you can buy of any charging equipment out there today and does it only charge Teslas or can you charge any electric car so out of the bag? Itll only charge Teslas because it has the Tesla connector, but you can buy a Tesla to j1772 adapter and use it to charge any electric vehicle all right. Well, the next one is the wall connector from Tesla. How is this one different again Tesla, so Teslas wall connector is their permanently mounted hardwired, connector that gets mounted on your wall, its not portable, um and uh. Its 48 amps it can deliver. Uh up to 11.5 kilowatt, which is a is, is pretty much most.

Electric vehicles top out at being able to accept 11.5 kilowatt now some of the newer EVS were really big. Batteries can accept uh up to 80 amps, which is 19.2 kilowatts, but for all intents and purposes, the the uh. The 48 amp 11.5 Chargers like the Tesla wall, connector, are pretty much as powerful as most people would need and Tesla sells it for 425 dollars, its a fantastic value and again you can just buy that and then get an adapter uh to charge your uh j1772 Vehicle Tesla also sells a version of this with a j1772 connector, but they charge geez. I think its like a hundred dollars more, so that pushed it up over 5 hundred dollars thats, why its not on this list here today, but you can get uh the wall. Connector and charge any electric vehicle with it if youre just buy an adapter, all right, uh, the last but not least, is Emporia charger yeah. So the Emporia um charger is relatively new. Its been out for about a year now, I think, maybe slightly more and honestly its a fantastic charger at a fantastic price, its ‘9 dollars most comparable Chargers on the market. Today that can do what the Emporia can do: uh cost at least two hundred dollars more. Its a 48 amp charger and its a smart charger. It has a y, it has an app Wi, Fi connected and Emporia sells a whole ecosystem of energy monitoring and energy saving devices and um, for instance, with this Emporia charger.

If you buy what they call the Emporio view or the view 2, I think its called its its another piece of equipment. You need to buy from Emporia and you have solar electric. You can use the two to only charge your EV from XS solar production, so the solar that your house isnt using, will trickle fee the battery on the on your car. So you can say my car is only charged with solar, electricity and and theres very few uh Chargers out there. That can do that uh. So its got a lot of options and at the price at the ‘9, its just a sick deal honestly it. It may be the best deal available out there. Today I mean the Tesla wall. Connector is an awesome deal. The Tesla mobile connector is a fantastic deal, but for a permanently mounted uh. You know 48 amp charger to hang on the wall of your garage, its tough to beat the Emporia these days. All right! Well, listen! I got ta. Ask you this one out of these five. What would be your top pick? You know Alex thats. I I Im such a nerd theres things I like about each one of these Chargers. Like I love the fact that the Tesla wall connector, can they call it daisy chain, and that means you can. You can share one circuit and add a bunch of chargers, so itd have to be between the wall connector and the Emporia um theyre, not your children.

You can pick one its okay theyre. All my children look. I know they are okay, Im gon na qualify. If I owned a Tesla, I would probably get the wall connector if I owned any other electric vehicle, probably the Emporia, all right, thats, thats thats, the thats. You know, listen anything thats on your list as we talked about it before the video uh is a good product. So thanks so much for uh doing this, and I will see you here next time, thanks for having me Alex well, there you go. If you want to know more about the commercial ice, cream, freezers or electric car chargers, whatever tickles your fancy with extensive reviews and ratings from Tom dont forget to subscribe to his channel, I put a link to it in the description of this video.