The Best 16 Amp EV Chargers of 2022.

Let’s have a look at each product in particular.

MEGEAR – Level 1-2 Portable EV Charger (16 Amp)

The first one that we’ll be looking at is one of the best-selling 16 Amp chargers, the Megear Level 1-2 Portable Charger. Because this unit works on a 16 Amp circuit, it can deliver up to 3.84 kW of charging power.

Let’s do some estimations on what that would mean in reality: For the standard range Telsa Model 3 with the 50 kWh battery it would take 13-14 hours to fully charge it. The Long Range version and the Model Y would take considerably more, about 19-20 hours because of their larger battery packs. A Hyundai Kona or a Kia Niro would take about 17-18 hours while a Nissan Leaf with the 40 kWh pack would take 11 hours.

You can plug this charger into either a NEMA 6-20 or a NEMA 5-15 outlet. It comes with a standard J1772 cable attached to the control box that can’t be disconnected, just like with most electric vehicle chargers sold in North America. The charger cable stretches 25 feet long (7.6 meters) which should have you covered in most situations.

This is not a smart charger which means it lacks WiFi connectivity or smartphone integration, there’s not even a charge scheduling function. What you get is 4 indicating lights on the charging box that tell you if it is powered on, if there’s electric energy being delivered to the electric car or if there is a fault.

Let’s look at the safety aspect of things and what features this 16 Amp portable EVSE charger has built-in: Overcurrent protection, Overvoltage, Leakage and ground fault protection.

This MEGEAR 16 Amp charger comes with a control box that is IP55 rated for being waterproof and dustproof but also comes with a 1-Year No-Hassle warranty from the manufacturer.

BougeRV – Level 1 Portable EV Charger (16 Amp)

The BougeRV is our second 16 Amp EV Charger which we’ll be looking at and straight from just looking at it, you can recognize that Duosida control box that most chargers use including some of the Lectron EV Chargers. This is a 16 Amp Level 1 & 2 charger that is compatible with 120V outlets and 240V outlets. If you plug it into a 240V socket, it will deliver 3.8 kW of power and achieve the same charging times that we listed for the Megear.

You can plug this into a NEMA 5-15 or a NEMA 6-20 outlet. The EV Charging cable is 25 ft long and if that isn’t enough for you, you can always just get an extension cord with a J1772 connector.

Like the Megear, this doesn’t have any kind of smart features like connectivity, scheduling or smartphone integration. Its function is just to be a 16 Amp Charger, plug and play, quick and effortless and of course be cheap and it does that very well because this is one of the cheapest 16 Amp chargers that you can buy.

The control box has all the safety functions that you would expect like Lightning, Leakage, Overcurrent, Overvoltage, Undervoltage and Overheat Protection. As we already know, every one of these control boxes is IP55 rated and the manufacturer will offer a 1-Year No-Hassle warranty.

On the control box of this 16 Amp portable electric vehicle charger you’ll also find the 4 LED lights that just tell you if it is powered on, if it is charging or there’s a fault.

PRIMECOM – Level 2 Portable EV Charger (16 Amp)

Then there is our third 16 Amp EV Charger, the PRIMECOM. This one is a pure 240 Level 2 charger that can deliver 16 Amps with a charging rate of 3.84 kW. You can’t plug this one into 120V outlets, but you can plug it into NEMA 14-30, 10-30, 14-50, 6-20, 6-50 and 10-50 sockets. As far as charging times are concerned, you can just take the first two as a reference, since in terms of power they’re the same.

A great thing about this particular model is the fact that it comes either a 30 ft (9.1 meters) or a 50 ft (15.2 meters) SAE J1772 charging cable. The base model is longer than more than 95% of J1772 electric charging cables on the market in the US. You won’t need to buy an extension cord at this length.

While the PRIMECOM doesn’t have any smart features either, it does come with an LCD screen which will display the Amperage limit for the circuit it is connected to, the charging status, how much time has it been since it started delivering power to the car, the temperature of the control box, the actual Amperage, Voltage and Charging power. Some people would find that to be non-essential geek info but I think it’s better to have it than not to.

The enclosure is IP55 rated and Megear will offer you a 1-Year No-Hassle warranty on the device.

MEGEAR – Level 1 EV Charging Station (6-16 Amp)

The last 16 Amp charger we’ll be looking at is the MEGEAR Level 1 charging station. This will work on a 16 Amp circuit however it only delivers 1.92 kW of power because it is a Level 1 charger. If you’ve only got a 110 or a 120V plug and you don’t want to change it, this will work. It can plug into a NEMA 5-15 outlet. The charging times will be much slower though, as an example with the standard Tesla Model 3 it will now take about 29 hours to fully charge it. Level 2 really does charge much faster.

It too has an LCD Display which shows you important info about the charging process like Amperage, Voltage but also lets you set a charging timer, something the others cannot do. Using RFID cards you can set a timer or adjust the amperage, giving this charger slightly more flexibility. Whether that will weigh more than having Level 2 charging speeds is your decision.

Now Megear calls this a portable electric vehicle charging station because you can mount it on the wall, but you can also carry it around.

Just like the BougeRV and the other Megear, this comes with a 25ft cable that can be extended via the use of an extension cord.

This is probably the more compact and durable of the 4 because the enclosure is IP66 rated, so it has better water protection than the others.