The Blink Charging co. ($BLNK) is a leading manufacturer of charging products for business owners and EV consumers. The company designs the chargers and also operates EV charging stations. When you have your own home charger, you instantly get more freedom and peace of mind beginning the the first day of use. Blink reports more than half of EV drivers prefer to charge at home over public stations.
I was given the chance to unbox and install the Blink HQ 200 Smart EV Charger in my garage. You can see how it went:
Out of the box:
The Blink charger was delivered by FedEx to my home in NE Ohio a few days later than expected because of Winter storm Elliot. The 20 pound package includes the charging unit, 23-foot long NEMA 14-50P plug (attached), and one small hex drill bit for taking off the front panel. I took the box outside with my drill and iPhone ready to get started. Back in October of this year we had an electrician install a 240 Volt plug. With a quick look at the instruction manual I learned this at-home charger has up to 50 amps of charging power, but only if your circuit box can support it. With me, I have a dedicated 40 amp circuit for the 240 volt garage outlet.
Mounting to the wall:
This is really the only difficult part of the entire process. For some reason, Blink only gives you about six inches of cable from the outlet to the charger, which means you have to mount the entire thing near or actually on top of your outlet. If you’re able to find a stud in this tight area of your garage consider yourself extremely lucky. I won’t even get into how hard it was to put the front panel back on while it was mounted to the wall.
The app:
After I downloaded the official Blink charging app, the initial setup was a little frustrating. Let me explain: It first asks you to connect your phone to the charger’s built-in Wi-Fi, but when you attempt to enter the password for it, the default password is a long string of numbers separated by dashes followed by the text @Blink_GEN2. I guess it’s not too terrible for a one time setup, but it did remind me of an old SNL skit with Alec Baldwin about those now ancient 10-10 phone numbers.
It lets you set charging schedules for off peak times, turn on/off charging manually, and it even has smart speaker controls (Alexa, Siri and Google). The app also lets you check some analytics including your EVs energy consumption over time.
Electrek’s take:
At first glance, Blink’s Smart EV home charger will nearly blind you with its super bright LED indicator ligts and lets not forget its slim/sleek design. Blink’s smart charger goes for $749.99 on the main website or about $800 with taxes and shipping.
Charge on!
