I love reading these responses as so many people have different views on the hotels in Taipei. We've stayed at the Shangri-La, Mandarin Oriental, Hyatt Regent, Miramar Garden, and Regent Hotel in Taipei. From a service perspective, we felt that the SL was wonderful, though none of the hotels had "bad" service in our experience. From a room perspective, we loved the SL and MO, which will probably be our go-to hotels when staying in Taipei. The Hyatt Regency was generally nice--especially the lobby--for us, but our room (mold in the bathroom, issue with shower, etc.) left things lacking. And while the Grand Hyatt location is hard to beat, ultimately given how easy it is to get around Taipei via taxi or metro, none of these major hotel locations are deal breakers for us. In terms of food at the above (specifically for buffets, though we've eaten at other restaurants at the hotels, too), we still haven't had a hotel beat the SL buffet, though the MO buffet was pretty darn good, too.

The Regent was our least favorite hotel among the bunch (with the exception of the Grand Hyatt . . . it was nicer than the Regent in many ways, but the problems we had with our room and the food brought it down for us). It was an interesting hotel to say the least, but it did seem a bit more dated than the others. Still very nice to be sure, but we preferred the others to it.

Note, a general note on rooms, we were upgraded at the MO, Hyatt Regency, SL, Miramar Garden (which only gets a mention as we were upgraded to a presidential suite), and Regent (though I think the Regent upgrade was just to a higher floor now that I think about it), so I'm not sure if (particularly pertaining to some of the comments I've seen about the SL) that led to getting a different room experience than others have noted.