We were 3 friends staying at SoHostel on 20th - 24th October 2017 (Friday to Tuesday). Booked a 4 persons dorm with ensuite bathroom.

Met with a friendly staff when we checked in and she showed us around the place.

Room:
Metal bunk beds with sockets and reading light for each bed. Good that we're able to just plug our USB charging ports. Room size was alright with just enough space to pack our big luggages.

Ensuite bathroom:
Spacious bathroom, but really cold after you shower when you need to dry yourself. Don't think there are heaters in the bathroom. Would be great if the bin was cleared more often, it was full on the 3rd night.
Only hassle is that if you need to dry your hair after shower, you'll have to go down to ground level to the Pamper room where the hairdryers are. No hair dryers in the ensuite toilet.
There are 2 other bathrooms and separate toilets on our level for sharing, so I think it's quite convenient. Otherwise, I think you can probably use the showers on other levels.

Noise:
Really really noisy on weekends. Very poor soundproofing and we could hear noises when others slam their doors all night. Not to mention there are lots of pubs around the area and noises continued till late.
That being said, we had better sleep on weekday nights where there weren't as much noise.

Location:
Good location, walkable distance to quite a few places (SoHo, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Oxford Circus).

All in all, not a bad stay. Probably best to avoid weekends.

First of all I rarely if ever give 1 star ratings but I feel very justified in doing so here after what happened today and pretty sure it's the first time ever that I have done so.

I booked a room here whilst in transit in Jordan waiting foe my flight to Heathrow. For some reason booking.com didn't ask for credit card details to confirm my booking (every other time I have used the site it has) so I refreshed and booked again. Next thing I know I am receiving notifications that I have booked twice. I hit the "make changes to your booking" button and sent an email away asking for clarification around the issue. Before receiving a reply back I received 2 notifications that my booking was not secure until I paid. I tried to do this but it wouldnt accept my visa travel card so I emailed again explaining. I received a very short email back from sohostel staff saying I need to contact booking.com direct to sort it out and I replied confused saying I thought I had done that because I just clicked the button on the site and if they would hold only one room for me since my payment didnt go through and the booking for either of them was not secured. I received no reply back and upon arrival around 4:30pm 23rd Oct, I was informed I needed to call booking.com or would be charged for both rooms. I was again confused since I received word back that the booking wasnt confirmed as I didnt secure it with my credit card details however after asking several times for how to contact them to do so I obliged and called them on my mobile even though I didn't feel it was necessary or made any since since the email said my booking was not secure. The voice over service was really hard to navigate and use and I wound up on hold. The ladies at the front desk then started requesting I pay for my room to speed things up even though I was on hold with them. I said I wanted to wait until I spoke with booking.com as I didn't want to give my card details over and potentially be charged twice. One lady behind the counter started saying something about being flexible with me as a favour and not charging me twice but I must speak with booking.com to cancel the room that wasnt even confirmed. The way the conversation headed I got really annoyed and questioned why didnt they send me these details as a response to my email and I could have sorted this out previously. I got some stupid manipulative answer that made no sense and was told the hostel would get charged for the booking if I didn't cancel it with booking.com. But as I told her many times the booking wasn't even secured. I decided to walk out and let them sort out both of the cancellations since they were being rude and unhelpful just to prove a point about their lack of customer service and bad attitudes.

The staff is very nice and helpful. Rooms were very clean, comfortable and spacious. The vibe was always so relaxed at any time of day. It's in a great location - very close to everything you could want in the downtown London area. No washrooms in the room though, but not a deal breaker.