The connector is the product
It is worth being precise about what you are paying for here, because the hardware inside is not exotic. Lectron sells a 40-amp J1772 portable that looks, weighs and charges much like this one. The difference is the last six inches of cable: a native NACS coupler instead of a J1772 coupler with an adapter screwed to it.
That matters more than it sounds. NACS — the connector Tesla opened up and SAE standardized as J3400— is now the port on new cars from several automakers, not just Teslas, and our connector guide covers which is which. An adapter in the path adds a joint that can work loose, a part you can leave in a hotel room, and in some cars a fit that a tight charge-port recess does not love. For a charger that spends its life being plugged and unplugged in unfamiliar places, removing that joint is the entire value proposition.
The reverse case is worth stating plainly, because it is the one that catches people: this is nota universal charger. A J1772 car cannot use it without a NACS-to-J1772 adapter, which Lectron notes and does not include. If your household has one NACS car and one J1772 car, you are buying an adapter either way — and in that situation the J1772 version of the same charger plus the adapter most Teslas already ship with is usually the cheaper path.
What 40 amps gets you, and what Lectron claims it gets you
Forty amps at 240 volts is 9.6 kW. That is the published ceiling on every plug-in charger we track, portable or wall-mounted, because the NEMA 14-50 receptacle and its 50-amp circuit cap it there — the units that go to 48 amps are all hardwired. So in charging terms this portable is not a compromise against a plug-in wall charger at all: it is the same number.
At our stated reference of roughly 3.5 miles per kWh, 9.6 kW is about 34 miles of range per hour. Eight hours plugged in overnight is therefore around 270 miles — more than most people drive in four days.
Lectron’s own page gives three different answers to the same question. It claims “260+ miles overnight”, then “up to 36 miles of range per hour”, then “30+ miles of range per hour”in its FAQ, with a disclaimer that real speed depends on the car, the state of charge and the temperature. All three are in the right neighborhood and none of them states the vehicle efficiency behind it, which is why we publish our own number with the assumption attached. If your car does 2.8 miles per kWh rather than 3.5 — a big SUV in winter, say — the honest figure is closer to 27 miles an hour, and our charge-time guide shows how to run it for yours.
The documentation gap, item by item
This is the part of the review that would normally be a table of specifications. It cannot be, because four of the rows would read “Not published”. Here is each one, and what its absence actually costs.
No enclosure rating.Lectron’s specification block publishes no IP or NEMA figure for this charger. The only ratings anywhere on the page sit inside the product imagery, and they disagree: one graphic says IP65, another says IP54for the handle. The copy says weather-resistant, says “rain or shine”, and then advises against extreme weather exposure. We will not convert marketing images into a spec, so this entry reads unpublished in our registry. What that means in practice: treat it as a charger you plug in when you arrive and coil up when you leave, not one that lives on an exterior wall through a winter. Our ratings explainer covers what each digit would have told you.
No operating-temperature range.Nothing published, where Lectron’s own J1772 portable siblings and nearly every wall unit we track publish a range (commonly −22°F to 122°F). This is why the charger is deliberately absent from our cold-weather roundup, whose table only quotes figures a manufacturer has actually printed.
No warranty term. The one we would most like to see. Lectron publishes two years on its 40-amp J1772 portable and three yearson the hardwired Nexus 48A, so this is a gap in one product’s paperwork rather than a brand that does not do warranties. A 30-day return window is published. If you buy this unit, keep the receipt and the order record, because that is the only term you can point at.
No weight or dimensions. Trivial on a wall charger, not trivial on something sold as portable: the whole category is a trade between amps and what you are willing to carry. For comparison, Ampure publishes 9 lb for its 32-amp Go. We do not know what this one weighs.
It is worth saying clearly that none of this is evidence the charger is poorly built. It is certified — ETL, ENERGY STAR, FCC, with UL standards named if inconsistently — and ENERGY STAR certification in particular is a real, audited listing that also tends to be the eligibility filter for utility rebate programs. The gaps are in what Lectron chose to print, and our rule is that we report the page rather than fill it in. Where a figure is missing we say so, which is the same standard we apply to certification claims.
WiFi version or Plug & Play?
Two SKUs, two prices, one decision. The WiFi version adds the Lectron app for scheduling and energy tracking; the Plug & Play version has LED status indicators and no account. Lectron is explicit that the app is “WiFi version ONLY”, so this is not a feature you can add later.
Our honest read for a portable: the app matters less here than on a wall charger. Nearly every EV schedules its own charging from the car’s own menu, which is the feature people actually use, and a charger that moves between houses is a charger whose WiFi credentials you will be re-entering. What an app does buy you is per-session energy measured at the wall — useful if you are reimbursing someone for electricity, or charging somewhere that is not your own house. If neither applies, the cheaper SKU is the better buy and that is not a compromise. The broader version of this argument is on smart versus dumb chargers, and if app depth is the thing you care about, our smart-home roundup ranks what every brand in the registry actually publishes.
Who should buy it
Buy it if your car has a NACS port and the charger needs to travel: you rent and want the hardware to leave with you, you split time between two homes, or you visit family with a 14-50 in the garage often enough that carrying a charger beats borrowing one. In that use case the native connector is worth real money and the missing enclosure rating barely matters, because the thing lives in a case.
Skip it ifthe charger is going on a wall and staying there. For similar money a hardwired unit gives you 48 amps instead of 40, a 23- to 25-foot cable instead of 16, and — the part we would not give up — a published enclosure rating and a published warranty. Our Nexus NACS reviewcovers Lectron’s own wall-mounted answer with the same connector, and the hardwired roundup covers the field.
And skip it if you need one charger for a mixed-connector household. Two cars with two different ports means an adapter in the path whichever unit you buy, and at that point the J1772 portable plus the adapter your Tesla already came with is the cheaper, more flexible answer. Our one-charger-two-cars guide works through that properly.