An average hotel with a great location
I stayed at Flatotel with my girlfriend on a recent trip to New York City. This is not our first visit to New York and we have stayed in Manhattan before. We booked the room on Hotwire, that is blindly, so we got a great rate and the hotel seemed to get good reviews on Trip Advisor. 
Upon arriving at our room, the first thing we notice was that there was a strong smell of cigarette smoke. We had booked a non-smoking room, so I contacted the front desk and was told very curtly that the room and floor were in fact non-smoking. The person at the front desk seemed to be unaffected by the fact that the room smelled strongly of smoke and offered no solutions to the problem. Following this the sink in the bathroom broke and we found that the in room safe was locked. Now each of these problems were resolved by hotel staff in relatively short periods of time but on top of the smoke smell it left a very bad first impression.
The hotel room itself was basic but functional. The bathroom was a little run down and small. The bathtub/shower combination only had a piece of class that covered half of the tub’s length, the result of which was that water would splash onto the floor every time you showered. This was inconvenient and annoying. The living area of the room was reasonably large but the arrangement of the furniture caused roughly a quarter of the room not to be useable. The mattress on the bed was older and also smelt of smoke. Overall the room worked fine to come home and sleep but offered no charm or draw.
One thing that Flatotel does have going for it is its location. It is just south of Central Park meaning it is in walking distance of most of the midtown sights. The hotel staff were very friendly and were able to fix most of the problems that came up very easily.
For the price that we paid Flatotel offered a clean room with a good location. That having been said, I would not pay full price to stay at this hotel, nor would I book here again or recommend it to friends because of the condition of the room.