Great location, friendly staff, modern...

Liked: A nicely renovated spot with great shared facilities - kitchen has air fryer, panini press, microwave, etc. and showers are really clean. Staff was so helpful when I needed to store my bags after checkout.
Disliked: The individual rooms get quite hot at night since there’s no air con. The fans help a bit but on a sweltering night it got pretty difficult to fall asleep. Keeping the door ajar until bedtime so the hallway air could flow in was helpful

Great location but noisy and...

Liked: Location
Disliked: Incredibly noisy. Beer pong in bar with shout g etc. shoukd be marked as a hostel only

Bad

Nice beach hostel

Liked: Regular beach hostel, suitable for young travellers wanting to meet new people. Very close to the beach, the whole town is really nice, I liked it. Also it's just half an hour by ferry from the center of Sydney. The breakfast was good, it's nice that it's free. It seemed very social, staff was nice and helpful. Despite the social events, noise went significantly down after 11 pm, so you could sleep pretty well. Many surfers and beach-goers there.
Disliked: I've certainly seen cleaner places. It wasn't bad per se, the bed was clean and bathroom wasn't truly dirty, but the cleaning could be deeper (like the lockers were quite dirty from the side that goes beneath the bed) and the bathrooms could be cleaned more often (they were nice in the morning, but evening was kinda ew - water and sand everywhere). Also comfort wasn't very high - you couldn't even sit upright on the top bed and there was no shelf for stuff. But hey, not bad for the price.

Close to everything

Liked: I was in Manly for the Sun Run, and the hostel is very well placed for that. The free breakfast was very good, and other guests not noisy (which can be a problem in hostels).
Disliked: No TV anywhere! And the Aussies were playing test matches! The language used in the hostel's emails to me is ridiculous - "Welcome, ya legend!" etc.

Love Stoke! Been to around...

Liked: The fact that there's so many free activities (yoga, beach volleyball, surfing and skating equipment) is even better given the great location of the hostel near the beach. Super easy to make friends for solo travellers, and the staff is lovely.
Disliked: Bit hot and humid in the rooms at night.

Superb

Very good

Good

Liked: Excellent breakfast
Disliked: Noise levels