The four specs that decide whether a charger travels well: how much power it makes, how far the cable reaches, what it plugs into, and what the body is sealed against. Every figure is as published by the brand; blanks read “Not published” because that is what the source says, not because we stopped looking.| Charger | Max amps | Cable | Plugs into | Enclosure | ENERGY STAR |
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| Ampure Go Portable Level 2 Charger | 32 A | 20 ft | NEMA 14-50 cord for 240V, NEMA 5-15 cord for 120V | IP67 (NEMA 6P watertight) | Yes |
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| ELEGRP 40A Portable Level 2 Charger | 40 A | 25 ft | NEMA 14-50 plug | IP67 (station), IP54 (connector) | Not published |
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| Lectron 40A Portable Level 2 Charger | 40 A | 16 ft | NEMA 14-50 plug | Not published | Not published |
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| Lectron Portable Level 2 Tesla Charger (NACS) | 40 A | 16 ft | NEMA 14-50 plug | Not published | Yes |
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What makes a charger portable, and what doesn’t
The industry uses “portable” for two different things, and conflating them is how people end up disappointed. The first is a plug-in wall charger: it terminates in a NEMA 14-50 plug instead of a wire nut, so it comes off the wall when you move. It is not designed to be handled weekly. The second is a portable, or travel, charger: a control module on a cord, meant to be unplugged, coiled and put back in a bag, with a bracket as an option rather than an assumption.
Both plug into the same outlet and both are honest about it. The difference shows up in the details — module mass, cable stiffness, whether a second cord for a standard household socket is in the box, and whether the enclosure is rated for water it will actually meet. If you want the wall-first version of this decision, that is our plug-in (NEMA 14-50) roundup; this page is the carry-it version.
The four criteria, in full
1. Dual voltage is the whole point
A charger that only speaks 240V is only useful where somebody has already installed a 240V outlet. A dual-voltage unit ships with a second cord terminating in a standard NEMA 5-15 — the ordinary three-prong household socket — and drops to Level 1 speed when that is all there is.
Level 1 is slow: around 1.4 kW, or roughly five miles of range an hour at our reference efficiency. It is also the difference between leaving a friend’s house with 60 miles more range and leaving with none. Of the four here, the Ampure Go is the only one that ships both cords. The other three are 240V-only. Our Level 1 charging guide covers what that fallback speed really buys you overnight.
2. Publish the enclosure rating, or we record it as unknown
A charger that lives outdoors permanently is judged on its enclosure. A portable one arguably faces worse: it gets set down on wet gravel, packed damp, and carried through weather no wall unit ever sees. So the rating matters more here, not less.
Two of these publish a real one. The Ampure Go is IP67 in a NEMA 6P watertight body, rated -22°F to 122°F. The ELEGRP is IP67 at the station— but IP54 at the connector, a genuine gap worth knowing before you leave the handle in a puddle. Lectron publishes no enclosure rating for either of its portables, which is a finding rather than a gap in our research, and we record it as Not published rather than inferring one from marketing imagery. What the codes actually promise is in our NEMA and IP ratings guide.
3. Amps are cheap; carrying the cable is not
The temptation is to buy the biggest number. Forty amps is 9.6 kW, about 34 miles of range an hour; thirty-two amps is 7.7 kW, about 27. Over a ten-hour night that is roughly 340 miles against 270 — a difference that matters to almost nobody, because almost nobody drives 270 miles a day.
What you pay for those eight amps is mass. The 40A units here run 25 feet and 16 feet of cable respectively, and cable is most of the weight and nearly all of the bulk in a portable charger. A 25-foot cable is the right answer if the charger will spend most of its life on a garage wall and travel occasionally. A shorter one is the right answer if it genuinely lives in the trunk.
4. Name the standard, not the badge
Every EVSE sold in the US should be listed to UL 2594 (electric vehicle supply equipment) and UL 2231 (personnel protection), by UL itself or by a competing lab such as Intertek, whose mark is ETL. That listing is what an electrician and an inspector look for, and it is the one specification we will not accept as an unsourced claim.
All four picks name it. The Ampure Go is UL and cUL listed to UL 2594 / 2231 / 817 and ENERGY STAR certified — unusual on a portable, and the same certification that gates most utility rebate programs. Both Lectrons are ETL listed to UL 2594 / 2231, and the NACS unit adds ENERGY STAR. The ELEGRP states an ETL listing without naming the standards, so that is exactly what we record. Our certifications guide explains what each mark covers.
What you can actually plug into away from home
This is the part the product photos skip. A portable Level 2 charger needs a 240V receptacle, and away from your own garage those are less common than the marketing suggests.
NEMA 14-50 is the good case, and the reason it exists in the wild at all is RV travel: most full-hookup campground and RV-park sites have one. That is a genuinely useful fact if you road-trip, and it is why an RV-park pedestal is the most reliable place to find Level 2 power outside a home.
A dryer outlet is usually not a 14-50. A NEMA 14-30 is a 30-amp receptacle supporting 24 amps of charging, and an older NEMA 10-30 has no separate ground at all. Neither is something to adapt casually, and a hardware-store adapter that lets a 40-amp charger draw from a 30-amp circuit is a fire risk, not a convenience. Our plug and outlet reference lays out every type and what each one can safely deliver.
The 120V socket is the universal fallback. Anywhere with power has a 5-15. On a fifteen-amp household circuit a Level 1 charge draws about 12 amps continuously for hours, so the circuit should be one nothing else is sharing, and an extension cord is not the right tool. That is the real argument for a dual-voltage unit: the fallback is always available.
The 40-amp ceiling, and why 32 is often enough
No portable charger delivers more than 40 amps, and that is not a manufacturing limitation. Under the National Electrical Code, EV charging is a continuous load, so a circuit is sized at 125% of the load — which read backwards means a receptacle supports 80% of its rating. A NEMA 14-50 is a 50-amp receptacle, so 40 amps is the maximum anything that plugs into one can draw. Every 48-amp charger on the market is hardwired for exactly this reason; the reasoning is laid out in hardwired vs plug-in.
Choosing 32 amps instead costs you about seven miles of range per hour and buys you a lighter unit that will also run happily on a 40-amp circuit — useful, given that not every 14-50 you find on the road is on a full 50-amp breaker. If your panel is the constraint rather than the outlet, our chargers for small panels covers the adjustable-output route.
How we separated them
Ampure Go wins because it is the only one that treats portability as an engineering brief rather than a marketing word. It ships both cords, so it works at a 14-50 and at any household socket. It is IP67 in a NEMA 6P watertight body rated -22°F to 122°F, which is a better seal than most permanently mounted chargers carry. It is UL listed to the named standards and ENERGY STAR certified. The module weighs nine pounds. The cost is speed: 32 amps rather than 40, about 27 miles of range an hour by our arithmetic. Ampure’s own page claims up to 25, so we are, unusually, the more optimistic of the two.
ELEGRP 40A is the pick if the portable is also going to be the everyday charger. A full 40 amps, selectable down to 32, 24, 20 or 16 for a smaller circuit, a 25-foot cable, an IP67 station body rated -22°F to 122°F, and a built-in one-to-twelve-hour delayed start so overnight charging can follow a time-of-use ratewithout an app or an account. Two honest caveats: the connector is rated only IP54 against the station’s IP67, and 25 feet of 40-amp cable is the least pleasant thing here to coil.
Lectron 40A is the one to buy if the charger really does live in the trunk. It makes the same 40 amps as the ELEGRP on nine feet less cable, which is the difference between coiling it in ten seconds and wrestling with it, and it is the only 40A unit here from a brand whose whole line we already track. It is ETL listed to UL 2594 / 2231 with a two-year warranty, and it sits in the same value bracket that puts it on our budget roundup. Lectron publishes no outdoor or IP rating for it, so treat it as an indoor unit until the brand says otherwise. Full detail is in our Lectron 40A review.
Lectron Portable Level 2 Tesla Charger is the same idea with a native NACS connector, which matters more on a portable than on a wall unit: an adapter you have to remember to pack is an adapter you will eventually leave at home. It is ETL listed to UL 2594 / 2231 with a UL 2251 handle and carries ENERGY STAR. Its documentation is the weak point — no published enclosure rating, no temperature range, no warranty term — and Lectron’s own imagery cites enclosure figures that disagree with each other, which is why we record Not published rather than pick one. If a NACS charger is going to live on a wall instead, our Tesla and NACS roundup is the better page.
What we left off, and why
Most of the category, honestly. Search “portable EV charger” and you get dozens of 32A and 40A units at low prices from brands whose own websites either do not exist or do not publish an enclosure rating, an operating-temperature range or a named safety standard. Some of them are probably fine. We cannot tell you which, and neither can they, so they are not here.
We also left off two units we wanted to include. Lectron’s dual-plug Level 1 and Level 2 portable — the closest J1772 competitor to the Ampure Go — reads “Currently unavailable” on Amazon as of our check on 25 August 2026, and we do not list chargers you cannot buy. And the Tesla Mobile Connector, the unit that defined this category, is sold primarily through Tesla’s own store; Tesla’s specification pages are not machine-readable for us, so we will not publish specs for it we cannot verify at source. If you own one already, it is a 32-amp-class travel charger and it does the job.
Portable, plug-in or hardwired?
Buy portableif the charger has to move — a rental you will leave, a second home, a road trip, a car you are not sure you are keeping. Buy plug-inif it will live on one wall but you want it to be your property rather than the building’s. Buy hardwired if you own the house and want the 48 amps a plug cannot deliver.
One caution that applies to all three: if a suitable 240V outlet does not already exist, installing one is electrical work with a permit, and the outlet — not the charger — is where the money goes. A portable charger does not change that arithmetic on the first install, only on every move afterwards. Our installation cost guide has the real breakdown, and chargers for renters covers what to ask a landlord before you spend anything.
