Trendy downstairs, tired upstairs
We stayed at the Royalton for a week in late November, 2012, based in part on the reviews on Tripadvisor.
First, the location is great; it is a few blocks from Times Square, the theatre district, and some pretty good restaurants.
The hotel itself has a very busy nightclub and restaurant in the 'lobby', the configuration of which could be more accurately described as a check-in desk in a nightclub. This is fine, just different. The music gets pretty loud later in the evening, but we couldn't hear it from our room.
We had booked a studio room, which has a fireplace, big soaker tub, king bed, and more space than a standard room. While broadly as described on the website, the room (although large) was pretty tired looking - worn carpet, missing grout between the tiles in the bathroom, ugly staining in the grout around the tub, shower curtain bar anchor pulled out of the ceiling at one end etc. No one thing terrible, but it didn't feel clean, and didn't feel like it had been well maintained. The fact that the paint and carpets were all a uniform grey-green color likely didn't help as it added to the dingy feel.
The mattress on the bed was pretty soft and did not isolate any movement, although the linens were fine. Sleep-wise, it would also be good to pick an upper floor, as the windows are not very sound-proof and New York is generally a noisy place at all hours. We were originally given a room on the 3rd floor facing W44th, and within a few minutes it was clear it would be pretty loud. We requested to be moved up and the hotel staff were very helpful in accommodating this request (note that this is the first time I have ever requested a room change in a hotel). Our new room on the 9th floor was much better, and faced W43rd instead, which is a quieter street.
We chose to have a fire one night in the fireplace (which requires that the outside temperature be below 40 f), and were surprised to learn that the fireplaces are not gas, but burn real wood. The building maintenance person came up promptly when we phoned and started a duraflame log in the fireplace for us, at which time we noticed the loud hum of an extractor fan starting up (it was maybe as loud as the microwave in your kitchen, or a hairdryer).
The fan continued to run for some time, shutting off at 3 or 4 in the morning (it was loud enough that the absence of the sound woke me up). The effect of the fan, apart from the noise, was that all heat from the fire was pulled up the chimney, so the value in having the fire was really lost (i.e. no 'cozy' factor). It should also be noted that the fan is common between rooms, so even when someone else has a fire, you are treated to the sound of the fan at the same volume.
While the hotel does provide an iPad in each room with web access, the implementation was a little clumsy and the browser was hard to find. There is WiFi in the hotel, but it is $10 a day.
Overall, the service was pretty good, and the location was great, but the hotel did not live up to the $450/night it cost, even in New York (there are much better places like the Giraffe).