Ballsbridge vs Dublin City Center

Ballsbridge is a very nice, quiet, upscale suburb - many of the embassies are located there.
It is, however, located pretty far away from the center of things in Dublin requiring a taxi, bus, or DART ride to get into town. We stayed there on one of our first visits to Dublin years ago, but ultimately decided that it was just too remote for us.
On our last trip we stayed at this place https://www.theleesonlodge.com/ which is located much closer to things but still far enough away to be quiet in the evenings. It's about an 800 meter level walk from the hotel to St. Stephens Green - took us about 10 minutes on foot, fyi. There's an Airlink bus stop right out front that made getting to the airport extremely convenient.
If your intention (per your other post) is to stay in Dublin and book day trips you might want to consider it as a cost-effective alternative to Ballsbridge. Would simplify your daily logistics I think.

Ballsbridge is a flat, 25 minute walk from Trinity College. We (50-somethings) walked it everyday. It seems much quieter than town center. Plenty of places to eat along the way. We enjoyed Searson's for pub food. Also, Merrion Square and St. Stephen's Green are pleasant parks. If you are tired or in a hurry, taxis work well.

Actually, it's about 2 miles from the Clayton Hotel to Trinity College ... making the walk more on the order of 45 minutes unless you're really hot-footing it.
We did it every day when we stayed down there but I must admit it got old after a while (the 4 mile round trip did work off the Guinness however).
Taxi's are relatively cheap and with a family of 4 would probably be more cost-effective than the DART.

I'm looking at the Ballsbridge area as well, but we won't be there until October. We're looking at Ariel House and Pembroke Townhouse as options. They're a little closer to the tourist sites than Clayton Hotel and both are reviewed well by RS and other websites. The DART station is not that far away and the Airport bus stops very close by. If you look on Google map there are a number of restaurants, etc throughout the Ballsbridge area. We don't want to be in the middle of the action, so that's why we're choosing the more sedate Ballsbridge area.

For what it's worth although not current, a friend and I stayed at Ariel House way back in 1992. It was lovely then and looking at their website, it looks nicer now. We were there for the Dublin Horse Show before going on a week long trail in Donegal and another week of driving around. The B&B was an easy walk to St Stephan's Green that didn't seem too long, since we walked it multiple times. I don't remember that taking the bus to the horse show grounds was difficult, nor getting to the train depot to go to Sligo. I doubt if that has changed much. We did not go to Trinity College so I can't comment on it's location vs Ballsbridge.

Thank you for the feedback!!!!

We stayed at Ariel house in the Ballsbridge neighborhood. Nice, residential area. We took the DART to city center. Next time, I want to be more centrally located.