Lectron NEMA 14-50 Socket Splitter Review
GRANTING THE ABILITY TO CHARGE TWO ELECTRIC CARS AT LEVEL 2 SPEEDS COMES WITH SOME DRAWBACKSDisclaimer: Lectron sent us a unit of the Socket Splitter free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
Retail Price: $199
From One To Two
If you have two electric vehicles, but only one NEMA 14-50 outlet in your garage, chances are you’re forced to figure out how to keep the cars charged up and ready to go in the morning. Lectron has a very simple solution that for some reason I never even considered before. Why not split the single outlet into two outlets with a splitter like you would for your other electronics in your house? Sure there are restrictions to this flow, but it at least provides two level 2 charging spots for one garage. The Lectron NEMA Socket Splitter actually works and I was able to recharge my Polestar 2 and Tesla Model 3 with level 2 speeds from just a single NEMA 14-50 plug in my garage. What were the trade offs though? Let's talk about it right now.
To The Max!
The maximum load capicity is 240 V and 50 A. A NEMA 14-50 splitter is exactly what it advertises to be. Instead of plugging your own level two charge cable to the NEMA 14-50 plug in your garage, all you have to do is plug the Lectron in instead. It functions just like a wall outlet splitter you would use in your living room to power up lamps and other electronics through only one wall outlet. The socket splitter houses two NEMA 14-50 plugs on its body where I’m able to provide two level two charging options for my electric cars. Previously, I would have to make a decision every single night to decide which car I would plug in for level two speeds, while the remaining vehicle would get the standard wall plug for level one trickle charging. This was fine for me as I only charged the Tesla Model 3 up to 80% for daily commutes, while the Polestar 2 went up to 90%. We never fully deplete the battery on a normal day’s drive and one car is often driven more miles than the other. It worked out.
However, I would have loved the option to have both cars charged to their set limits without needing to calculate in my head which one to play favorites with that night. Now with the Lectron, I can do just that. I also save time and money as I don’t need to install a second NEMA 14-50 plug into my garage, which I did consider at one point and would need to hire a professional electrician.
Not FoolProof
Unfortunately, it isn’t a fully perfect scenario as I still do have to prioritize one EV over the other in a different manner. While Lectron gives you two sockets to plug NEMA 14-50 chargers in, the two sockets do not work at the same time. Power only pushes through one socket at a time. In this case, the left channel will always take priority and charge that car first. When the Lectron splitter recognizes that the car is done charging to the set limit, it will switch power over to the second plug. You can actually use either of the plugs for things that are not related to charging an electric car as well. For example, you can have a dryer plugged into one slot and an EV plugged into the other. As long as you plan which one has priority and place it on the left side, Lectron will do the rest of the work for you.
During my month reviewing the splitter, it charged my cars as it was intended to about 90% of the time. I did wake up to an uncharged Tesla which was plugged into the secondary channel a couple of times. I surmise the reason this happened was because the Polestar 2, for whatever reason, was still emitting a voltage reading over the threshold that Lectron classifies the charging session as completed. In the manual, Lectron claims the splitter will switch over after the first plug pushes less than 0.5 A for 3 seconds. I’ve camped out and watched the splitter work closely after the botched charging night and noticed that the primary plug would sometimes flicker back up at 0.6 A even though it lingers at zero for the most part. The Lectron socket splitter will then keep flipping between the two channels as it thinks the primary slot with the fully charged vehicle still requires electricity. It’s not foolproof.
Trade-offs
The socket splitter also makes a loud clunking sound when it switches between the sockets. It’s loud! It’ll clunk its way back and forth for a couple of minutes before settling down. When I say it’s loud, I mean it as I can literally hear it in my master bedroom upstairs in the middle of the night. I’ve gotten used to the sudden loud noises since the Lectron took lodging in my garage, but hopefully future iterations of these splitters can be a little bit quieter.
Another minor inconvenience is that I had to disable scheduled charging in my cars to be able to have them be compatible with the splitter. I tested this with both the Polestar 2 and the Tesla Model 3 and they absolutely do not charge if you don’t give Lectron immediate control over the electrical flow into your cars. This is a slight bummer as I have to go out and plug my cars in after 9 PM since I abide by my SoCal Edison Time-of-Use plan. For the trade-off of being able to have two level 2 charged cars, I’m more than willing to do this.
You can monitor what the Lectron splitter is doing through a small screen that displays information about the two units plugged in. The first slot shows the left plug and the second slot shows the right one. Like a phone battery charging, Lectron will display a battery level animation to indicate that the power is moving through that port. There’s also an LED indicator light in the form of a ring that occupies the space around the sockets. When the ring is lit blue, it means the socket is idling and ready to be used. When it's time for a socket to charge, the ring will animate a rotating green color to indicate that it is currently in use. Once it is fully finished charging, it will stay a solid green color, before transitioning back to blue if the other plug starts taking power. Going back to the display, it’s as simple as can be as Lectron only provides the pivotal charging information a user may need. There’s volts, wattage, and total kWh. That’s it.
final thoughts
At the end of the day, the Lectron socket splitter is a product that literally does that single thing it was made for. No more, no less. There’s no app that connects to the unit for users to add to their smart home. There’s no fancy AI implementation that will intelligently charge your cars to a certain percentage. The product doubles one NEMA 14-50 plug into two NEMA 14-50 plugs. It doesn’t cost an electrician to install, it doesn’t change your electricity plan, and it doesn’t cost a whole lot of cash. Lectron solves a problem in the most basic way possible. We’ve been using normal wall outlet splitters for the rest of our electronics for ages, why not do it for our electric cars? It may not perfectly change my garage’s workflow, but it is definitely better than what I was doing prior. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees and support our channel by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.