The trade, stated plainly
Twelve amps at 120 volts is about 1.44 kW. At our standard reference of roughly 3.5 miles of range per kWh, that is about 5 miles of range per hour, or roughly 50 miles across a ten-hour overnight window before losses. The plain 15-amp Lectron manages about 6 miles an hour and 60-odd miles overnight.
So you are giving up roughly ten miles per night to gain a schedule. Whether that is a good deal comes down to one question that has nothing to do with the charger: does your utility charge different rates at different times of day?
If the answer is no — a flat rate all day — then scheduling saves you nothing, and you should buy the 15-amp model and let the car handle timing. If the answer is yes, keep reading, because the arithmetic tilts hard the other way.
Why Level 1 is the level where scheduling matters most
This is the genuinely non-obvious part. A 48-amp Level 2 charger can put a full day’s driving back in under two hours, which means it can fit comfortably inside almost any off-peak window without much thought. A Level 1 charger needs eight to ten hours to do the same job. Off-peak windows are frequently narrower than that.
So the slower the charger, the more likely a session is to straddle a rate boundary and pull some of its electricity at peak prices. A charger that can be told start at 11pm rather than start when plugged in is doing real work here, every single night, on the level where the problem is worst. That is the case for this model in one sentence.
There is a second, smaller argument. At 12 amps this unit is a better electrical fit for a shared household circuit than the 15-amp version. The NEC’s continuous-load rule limits a standard 15-amp branch circuit to 12 amps of continuous draw — so on an older circuit that is also feeding a freezer or a workbench, the 12-amp charger is the one less likely to trip a breaker. If the only outlet you can reach is a shared one, that alone may decide it.
What the app actually does
Lectron publishes three functions: live charging status, scheduled sessions, and a kWh charge limit. Taking them in order of how much they matter.
Scheduling is the reason to buy this unit, covered above. The useful detail is that a charger-side schedule belongs to the parking spot, not the car — so if two vehicles share the outlet, or you swap cars, the off-peak timing keeps working without anyone reconfiguring anything.
The kWh charge capis more interesting than it sounds, and most car-side scheduling cannot do it at all, because cars think in percentages. Capping a session at a fixed number of kilowatt-hours is exactly what you want when charging at a relative’s house and reimbursing them, or when you want a session to consume a known, budgeted amount of electricity.
Live status is the feature people use twice and then ignore, and we would not pay a cent for it. It is pleasant to confirm from indoors that the session started. That is the whole of it.
Worth stating clearly: this measures and controls the charging session. It is not the wall-level energy monitoring that a unit like the Emporia Level 2provides, and it will not tell you much about your household’s overall consumption. Our smart charger roundup covers which app features genuinely earn their keep.
Build and safety
Physically this is the same proposition as the plain model: an IP65-rated control box — dust-tight and protected against water jets — a 16-foot cable, and a standard NEMA 5-15 plug. It is ETL listed to the UL 2594 and UL 2231 standards, which are respectively the EV supply equipment standard and the personnel protection standard for EV charging circuits. That is the same third-party safety bar the expensive chargers clear; our guide on whether cheap EV chargers are safe explains how to read the marks.
Lectron does not publish a warranty term for this model, and our spec table records that as “Not published” rather than filling in a plausible number. On a sub-$200 accessory that is a smaller deal than it would be on a $600 wall unit, but it is a real gap and we would rather flag it.
One rule carries over unchanged and is not optional: plug it directly into a wall outlet. Not an extension cord, not a power strip. Any EV charger draws its rated current continuously for hours, which is a duty that generic cords are not built for.
Adding Wi-Fi does add one new failure mode, and it is worth knowing before you buy: this is a 2.4 GHz device, and a garage or carport is one of the worst places in a house for 2.4 GHz coverage. If pairing fails, it is usually the network rather than the charger — our Wi-Fi setup guide covers the band-splitting trick that fixes most of these. Reassuringly, losing Wi-Fi should not stop a charging session; it stops the reporting and any charger-side schedule.
Who should buy it — and who should skip it
Buy it if you are charging on Level 1 andyour utility has time-of-use pricing. That combination is where a scheduled start pays for the three amps several times over, every night. Buy it too if the only outlet you can reach shares a circuit with other loads — 12 amps is the friendlier neighbor — or if you specifically want the kWh charge cap for charging at someone else’s house.
Skip it if you are on a flat electricity rate and your car already schedules charging reliably. In that case the app is a feature you will open twice, and the 15-amp modelgives you 25% more charging rate for less money. Skip it as well if a 240V outlet is available to you: at that point Level 2 is roughly six to eight times faster and the whole scheduling problem largely disappears — see our Level 1 vs Level 2 comparison and our picks for renters for what that path looks like.