Just completing a 3 night stay here. Plat and upgraded to a club floor room with a spectacular view and huge room (suite?). Staff has been very good, sufficient english, and very clean. I did not research the location, and didn't know it was far away from any 'action' (bars, clubs, food, shopping, etc.). But to be fair, Uber is cheap so $3 US will get you to the heart of the action.
June is the low, low season, so very slow around here and at the beaches. Could almost call it nearly dead.
I did eat several meals here, unfortunately. My dinners were quite disappointing in terms of food quality and taste. Very "bleh" and things I would not order again. Not even in the same universe as good locally owned Brazilian restaurants. So do breakfast here, but skip for lunch and dinner. Breakfast was quite tasty with cook to order eggs.
If I ever came back to Rio, I'd look at something more central like the JW. I did appreciate some English TV channels such as CNN international.
Oh, and I did have one problem here. The first evening the internet was terribly slow, would drop, and basically useless on both of my laptops and iphone. I called guest services and they said there was no problem, but would call me back. They never called back. The following day I had the same problem. They sent an IT guy, and he reset the local wifi router. That did the trick and it's been fine since. Never had a problem like this before at Starwood.