Great location and price as long as you understand what you are getting.
Booked through air B&B. Stephanie was very hospitable and accepted the booking on very short notice. The rooms are very acceptable for what they could be in competing hostels in the very near vacinity, while being cheaper in value.
The good:
+Personal pin combination locker which can fit about 2 carry-on sized luggage and two boarding bags (possibly 1 30" luggage). Great for piece of mind and other hostels might not offer that. Especially since the price is pretty hard to beat even if those other hostels offered pods.
+Private sleeping pods with privacy blinds. Definitely better and safer than bunkbeds
+Free fast wifi
+Very secure premises. At night time, you need to go through about 3 door locks to get to your bed, as well as very "passionate" desk attendents checking your documents if you come in after hours.
+Perfect area that is close to any bar you could need downtown or within a 20 minute walk.
+Good price for a hostel (as long as you are a single traveller/2 party group. Seen a family of at least 3 get organized there and at that point, you may need to research other avenues.
+Ambient lighting on a proximity sensor that lights up the floor a warm purple hue. Guides your way if you're up during the night and doesn't wake others up or blind you.
+2 USB ports within the pods and two stage lighting for either full light, essentially a light purple nightlight or off.
+Washroom and shower located within each 10 person dorm.
+Very clean premises with toilet paper and soap dispensers in the shower. (Just make sure you have a towel)
Bad:
- A misunderstanding turned into a sour moment with one of the front desk attendents. I'm sure this was just a fluke occurance and management has no blame in the matter and should not reflect poorly on the company but it needed to be noted. All of the other staff were fantastic.
- The privacy pods can tend to get hot overnight(visited in early August)
- Not entirely sure if I missed them but I could only find an extra 5 shower stalls for women in the 100 floor hallway but not any for men. Could possibly be there somewhere but I don't recall seeing them on that floor
- The street in front of the hostel can be noisy at night as bar patrons passing by enjoy showing that they can't sing to save their lives.
Other notes:
- It's nearly impossible to not make noise if you come into your room after 11pm. Heavy locking doors, combination lockers and 50% of the room's tenants will be on the upper shelves of the pods, so if that happens to be you coming in late, it's really easy to feel guilty if you make some noise. This isn't unique to Jacob's Inn, it just should be noted when booking into a hostel, pods or no pods.
- If you are expecting a bonding experience with the other people in your room, you may want to temper those expectations. It seems that many of the tenants in our room of 10 would retire to their pod, close the privacy blinds and just be more personable with their smartphones. It would honestly be a dice roll situation and is more a sign of the times rather than a problem with the residence. Just don't go into a hostel with great privacy measures and expect 9 new friends to go pub crawling. (although they do offer a pub crawl and a free tour, so they definitely do try to make the effort to bring people out of their shell, so kudos to them).
-There was construction going on at the time we were staying. They didn't get in the way but a large portion of the lobby floor war inaccessible.
Ultimately, they offer a great service and are happy to show you are like you're home there. That along with a fantastic location and value when comparing prices with more expensive non-pod/bunkbed hostels in the area, it's just a no-brainer.