The pros:
— impeccable location. Colosseum down two blocks, the Pantheon is also within walking distance. There's plenty of everything: restaurants, grocery stores, even wineries. 20 minutes' distance from the Termini rail station, even with a packed suitcase. We used the metro once during our 5 day stay
— the host. Kind of. As this is an apartment that is rented by an agency (iFlat), different guests might get different hosts. Ours was Italian through and through, sat down with us over a map and showed us the right tourist spots, told us where the best access to the ocean is, etc. He acted a litle informal/goofy, but we didn't really mind:) We also randomly met him later in the city and he invited us for a drink. A great guy
— an INCREDIBLE bakery/cafe/tobacco shop just up the block. It's called Riccardo Taliani, make sure to check it out.
— everything was OK. Just OK. We didn't feel unsafe; the check-in, while a little bumpy (I'll explain), turned out fine, the basics worked well.
The cons:
— pretty much the entire experience. What we learned quickly after coming to Italy was that nothing gets done on time. As the flight touched down at 8 am and we still had time to check-in at 2 pm, we decided to use the option for luggage storage that came with the apartment. After chatting in the app, we were told that the office for storage is going to be open at 9:30 am. We came to the address – closed. Waited for 20 minutes, still nothing. We basically had to find another storage (that we paid EUR 8 for) and later got an apology from the host (as above) that another apartment had an electricity accident and that's why he wasn't able to be there. Well, whatever. We can spare the EUR 8, but the walking around the city, trying to find a storage place, was pretty annoying.
The host also came like 10-12 minutes late. Not a big issue, although not ideal.
— Upon check-in at 2 pm, the apartment was pretty dirty. The cleaning lady hadn't yet arrived, so there were dirty dishes and just a lot of stuff all over the place. The host called the cleaning lady and told her to come later that day – meaning she came to clean while we were in the house. Again, not really a big deal, but it paints a picture.
— There was a cabinet with most of the glasses inside, incl. wine glasses etc., that couldn't be unlocked. We literally had to go to IKEA to buy a pack of glasses for EUR 3. Also a small number of dishes for a 6 people house.
— A complete lack of litter bags to put in the bins, only one kitchen cloth towel... it was hard to find a lot of amenities needed for normal living stuff.
— All the stuff that somehow is there, is on the brink of failure. One of the fans broke while we were using it (we were able to fix it with a swiss knife and it works better than before). Another just won't stop turning because the knob that makes it stop somehow isn't there. The apartment doors are terrible; sometimes, the door is REALLY hard to unlock.
Not a single table lamp works. For some reason, they have different plugs than they use in Italy, so you can't plug them in. There's like 4 outlet adapters in a vase somewhere, but none of them was made for the lamps' plug type.
The shower doesn't have hot water. I stood there for 10 minutes, the tap all the way on hot (then I even tried all the way on cold!), and it still was cold. So you can only shower in the bathtub that has cracked and dirty ceilings above it and is just kind of tacky. The shower head also leaks slighthly, spraying in multiple directions.
The trash bin in one of the rooms is just broken. If you step on it to open it, the inside flies out.
Notes:
There's an insane amount of ducks. Everywhere. Not real ducks, but on decorations. There's paintings of ducks, about a 100 small duck figures in a cabinet, 2-3 lifesize duck statues, a duck-shaped basket. Every single day, we discovered more duck stuff; and every single day, we were more and more confused. We don't get, why someone would buy this much duck memorabilia. It's frightening. Don't go here if you're afraid of ducks. We're not, we're just really confused (in a good way, we had a laugh about it).
TL;DR
Apartment large and OK, location perfect. Check-in process kind of terrible. Definitely better for a 3-day stay than for a week. Would recommend for short stays, if you're in here longer than 5 days, stray away. Also, ducks.