This Week in Pods

Is Podshare really better than a luxury resort?

BuzzFeed’s new series Worth It is the kind of idea I wish I’d come up with first: a group of people test the same item at various price points—a $1 donut vs. a $100 donut, for example—and decide which version is the best.

We Tried A $1 Donut Vs. A $100 Donut To See Which Is The Most Worth It

Their most recent episode compares three hotel rooms: a “boutique hotel” charging $350-$450 per night, a luxury resort with rooms between $15K and $35K, and our favorite “live-work community,” Podshare.

As you might recall, Podshare provides guests with convertible bed/desk pods in a shared living space that kind of resembles a basement. Podshare costs $50 a night, making it the least expensive hotel the Worth It team tested.

It was also their favorite.

I learned a few things about Podshare after watching the video. First, not all of the pod beds are convertible. Only the Murphy Pods convert from beds to desks; the rest are bunkbeds that bill themselves as pods, which, as I’ve written before, seems to be a trend. (The word “bunkbed” is so last century.)

Second, like the Murphy Pods, the Podshare environment appears to require a lot of adjustment and conversion; on the one hand, you have Podshare founder Elvina Beck discussing the importance of “social collisions,” which essentially means random, unexpected encounters with other Podshare users, but then she also says that you must use headphones when you watch Netflix on the monitors that are built into each pod. (I get the reason for establishing a headphone rule, but I also remember the way “social collisions” in college or at camp were eased by going into a space where someone was watching television. You could sit down, share the show, and chat during the commercials. Again: so last century.)

You’ll have to watch the video to learn why the Worth It team liked Podshare the best, although I will note that it seemed to come down to a combination of expectation and aspiration; Podshare exceeded their expectations, and they could see it as a place they’d like to revisit someday. (They already knew they could never afford to return to the $35,000/night Vegas resort.)

Or, to quote Worth It’s Steven Lim:

“If you are looking for a hotel and you have $50, [Podshare] is the best cheap option you’ll get in LA.”

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