Evnex EV charger review, from an installer

The range, and which one is which

There are four units and the naming is nearly sensible.

The E2 Core, E2 Flex and E2 Plus are all 7.4 kW single phase, which is the right size for the overwhelming majority of Queensland homes. Core and Flex come with a 5 metre tethered cable; the Plus has an 8 metre cable plus WiFi and 4G.

The X22 is the three phase unit, 22 kW, with a 5 metre tethered cable, and it carries WiFi, 4G and Ethernet.

In practice most homes are choosing between Core, Plus and X22, and the decision is usually made by cable length and connectivity rather than by charging speed, which is not what people expect walking in.

Every one is tethered, so the cable length is a design decision

The whole Evnex range has the cable permanently attached. There is no socket version to plug your own cable into. That is a deliberate choice by Evnex and it is the right one for most households, but it means the cable length is not a detail, it is the thing that decides where the charger can physically mount.

Five metres sounds generous until you are standing in the garage. It has to reach from the unit on the wall, around the car, to a charge port that might be on the opposite corner of the vehicle from where you assumed. Reverse the car in instead of driving it in and the geometry changes completely.

This is exactly why the E2 Plus and its 8 metre cable exists, and it is worth the difference on a double garage, on a carport where the car parks at an angle, or anywhere the only sensible mounting position is not right beside where the car sits.

My practical advice: before you order, park the car where it will live, and walk the distance from the proposed charger position to the charge port, going around the car the way a cable actually has to go rather than straight through it. That five second exercise has saved several of our customers from buying the wrong unit.

Built in 4G solves a problem you have not thought about yet

Garages are where home WiFi gives up. They are usually the furthest room from the router, often behind a masonry wall or two, and frequently detached from the house altogether.

A smart charger that cannot reach the network is just a charger. You lose the scheduling, the app, the usage data and the ability for the unit to receive firmware updates, and you get there gradually rather than all at once, which is worse, because it works on the day it is commissioned and then quietly stops.

The E2 Plus and the X22 carry 4G as well as WiFi, so the unit has its own way onto the network whatever your router is doing. The X22 adds Ethernet on top, which is the most reliable option of the three if a cable can be got to it.

This is genuinely the feature I would pay for on a detached garage, and it is not the one the sales conversation usually leads with.

Overload protection, and why it matters

Evnex build in overload protection: the charger watches the home's energy use and slows the charge down so the house stays within its available capacity.

That sounds like a nice to have and it is not. On a house where the supply is already working hard, this is the feature that makes a home charger possible at all rather than turning the install into a supply upgrade.

The way it plays out in practice is undramatic, which is the point. Somebody puts the oven and the air conditioning on at six o'clock, the charger quietly drops its rate, and later in the evening when the house settles down it goes back to full speed. The car is still full in the morning and nothing trips.

If your home is one where an electrician has raised supply capacity as a question, say so when you are choosing a charger, because it changes which units are sensible.

Solar charging, and which models have it

Solar charging, where the unit uses only your excess solar rather than buying power back off the grid, is built into the E2 Core, the E2 Plus and the X22.

If you have solar and you want the car charged from it, check you are getting one of those three rather than assuming the whole range does it. This is the single most common specification mix up we see on this brand.

As with any solar aware charger, it needs to be able to see what your system is exporting, so where your switchboard and meter sit relative to the charger is part of the design rather than an afterthought. We work that out before quoting.

Where it suits, and where it does not

It suits you if you want a straightforward tethered charger that you walk up to and plug in, if your garage has poor WiFi and you value the 4G, or if your home's supply is tight enough that overload protection is the difference between a charger and a supply upgrade.

It suits you less if you specifically want an untethered unit, because the range does not offer one. If multiple cars with different cables share the charger, or you want the cable to travel with you, look at a socket model from another brand instead. Our EV charger brands page covers the alternatives we install.

Check the cable length against your actual parking before ordering, not after. It is the one decision on this range that cannot be undone without buying a different unit.

On the X22, the same caution applies as with any three phase charger: confirm what your car will actually accept. Plenty of vehicles cap their onboard charging well below 22 kW, and no charger can exceed the car's own limit.

For the work around the charger, what an EV charger costs to install sets out the general market ranges.

Common questions