I came through JFK last Sunday and visited Soho and Chelsea lounges. My comments on Chelsea lounge are in the other thread.

I wasn't at all impressed by Chelsea but summary was that Soho is 'OK' but feels like a downgrade compared to the old Flagship Lounge, mainly on design but also with regards to the food offering (buffet).

Anyway - came into Soho lounge around 5:00pm, took a seat at a working area table and set up. The power sockets seem to all have USB-A and USB-C built in (good) but as per Chelsea why isn't there a single socket anywhere that supports non-US plugs? This is a top lounge on flagship US-UK routes plus a number of European destinations. It's really not hard to cater for multiple plug standards in a single socket, or to have separate sockets like at LHR GF.

I decided to have a shower so walked down to the shower area, only to be sent back to reception to ask to be added to the list - I remember this process from DFW. Dutifully visited reception, came back and was shown to a shower room. The shower itself is pretty basic - just a wall mounted vertical rail with a shower head, so no body jets or rain shower option. I'm 5'11" and the shower head couldn't reach much above me at all unfortunately and the water pressure isn't great, but was still nice to freshen up after travelling.

Rather unfortunately the room was a bit dark as one of the recessed lights had been pulled/pushed out of place so made it difficult to shave in the mirror over the sink.



There's no lower level lighting around the mirror so it's not great if you were wanting to look at yourself to shave/apply makeup etc. Could really benefit from lower level lighting.



The second mirror (not above the sink) was tinted - presumably to make it unusable - and had this hanging light in front of it. Like Chelsea, feels like parts of the bathrooms have been designed by independent committees.



Nowhere to sit unfortunately, so when putting on shoes/socks I had to perch precariously on the edge of the luggage stand.

Back to the lounge itself and thought I'd have some food from the buffet. I should note that I've really enjoyed the JFK Flagship lounge food previously on numerous visits, and had come across from LAX earlier in the day.

This was at 7:30pm. Main dishes were Chicken Pot Pie, Cheese Tortellini with Tomato Basil sauce and a prawn dish.






I had some of the tortellini but found it to be very bland. On reading this thread it seems I should also have looked at the option to order other dishes, but compared to the Flagship offering previously from JFK (and which is still available in LAX, DFW etc) the buffet was poor.

At this point we left Soho to try out Chelsea instead.

Summary - for new, much hyped lounges the new facilities at JFK just don't impress me at all. I should try Greenwich on the next visit to see how that is, but on this experience I wouldn't be bothering to make an effort to get to the airport early. In my opinon there are some real missed opportunities and a lack of attention to detail that add up to a downgrade on the facilities that were previously available.