Let's start with the pros. Cheap and great location in terms of being walking distance to everything in Waikiki. Host was friendly and responsive, he called me back past 11 pm when we had an issue with parking, and gave us a refund for that day of parking due to the issue. Check in and check out went smoothly and the place was clean. Rather than a key, we were given a code to unlock the apartment, which was nice since we had so many people staying (4) and didn't have to concern ourselves about who had the key.
Cons. The immediate location of the Airbnb is quite literally an alleyway next to a dumpster and a sus-looking 7-11 where homeless people liked to hang around. I didn't ever actually feel unsafe, but it's definitely not luxury accommodations. Going into more detail about the dumpster, the garbage truck comes every other day at 6:30 AM and is extremely loud. All 4 of us, light and deep sleepers, got woken up by it every time it came. On the bright side, this forced me to get up early and go to bed early every day, but if you're hoping to sleep in on your vacation you should look elsewhere.
I've never seen the style of windows this Airbnb had before, they were basically glazed shutters except unlike shutters, you couldn't close them or move them at all. The bathroom window was broken and missing one shutter. This made air conditioning leak and the whole place not very sound proof. In addition to the garbage truck you can constantly hear people walking by and talking. Avoid this place if you are noise sensitive or a light sleeper. In addition, there were several times the smell from the garbage wafted in through the windows.
The hot water was inconsistent. 3 out of the 7 days I stayed here, I experienced a cold shower. In the apartment's defense, there were 4 people using the shower in a row every day. A cold shower in Hawaii isn't freezing cold, more like lukewarm so although it was annoying, it was still tolerable.
The apartment had basic supplies, but I think more geared towards 2 people to stay rather than 4. There wasn't enough toilet paper for us to last the whole week, and only 3 chairs so someone always had to stand or sit on the bed. Four bath towels were provided, but no hand towels or hand soap. The shampoo and body wash provided wouldn't even last a week for one person, but luckily we brought our own.
The host could have done a better job communicating the parking situation. During check in, he forgot that we already paid and reserved for parking beforehand and didn't explain to us where we could park. Thus, we assumed the 5 parking spots directly in front of the building we were staying at were the places we could park; we didn't realize that the parking spots also included the ones next to the building to the right of us. In the middle of our trip, we came back around 11 pm one day and panicked when we saw all the spots in front of our building taken. Took around an hour trying to contact the host and Airbnb before the situation was resolved. The host did find us another place to park and gave us a refund for that day of parking, so I think he handled the situation well.
In conclusion, when I originally booked the place, I thought it was incredibly value, but after staying, I realized that it's cheap for a reason. If you are ok with the cons I listed above, it's a decent place to stay, but I think I personally would book a more expensive and better place next time. This is at no fault to the host; it's just not a high-quality place to stay.