Cube Workspace Cape Quarter: Review for Digital Nomads

Cube Workspace is a small chain with four Cape Town locations, and the Cape Quarter site in De Waterkant is the most nomad-relevant of them. It sits on the first floor of the Cape Quarter retail complex, above a mall that contains Woolworths, a gym, a Pick n Pay, a nail salon, several cafés, and about twenty other shops. If you want your workday errands, lunch, gym, and office to fit inside one building, this is the space.

We have used Cube Cape Quarter both for full days and for drop-in call days over the last year. This is the honest review.

The basics

Address: 1st floor, Cape Quarter, 27 Somerset Road, De Waterkant.

Hours: Monday to Friday 07:30 to 18:00, staffed. Members get 24/7 access with an access card.

Day pass price: R220 in 2026. Includes Wi-Fi, hot desk, coffee, filtered water, printer, 1 hour of meeting room per day.

Monthly membership: R2700 for hot-desk unlimited, R3900 for a dedicated desk, R6200+ for a private office. Very close to Neighbourgood’s prices, with a slightly different offering.

Website: Search “Cube Workspace Cape Quarter” — they have a booking portal for day passes.

First impression

You walk into the Cape Quarter mall from Somerset Road, take the escalator to the first floor, turn left, and Cube is at the end of the walkway. Glass doors, staffed reception, a clean modern fit-out that reads more “corporate serviced office” than “hipster coworking”. This is not a negative. Some people actually want the grown-up serviced-office feel rather than the exposed-brick, vinyl-on-the-wall coworking aesthetic.

The main floor has hot-desk workstations, a kitchen, a breakout lounge, and a line of phone booths. That last point is the reason Cube is on this list.

Phone booths: the differentiator

Cube Cape Quarter has six fully-enclosed phone booths on the main floor, all bookable by the hour or grabbable on first-come. Six is roughly three times what most Cape Town coworking spaces offer. For nomads who spend their day on Zoom, Meet, or Teams calls, this matters enormously.

We have used the booths for 2-hour sales calls, 45-minute client reviews, and back-to-back 30-minute discovery calls throughout a full day. Acoustics are good, the chairs are comfortable, the Wi-Fi reaches into each booth at full speed, and the ventilation works (no booth-sauna problem). The booths are the reason we recommend Cube to anyone who is call-heavy.

Wi-Fi and speed

Speed tests from the main floor and from inside two of the phone booths (2026):

Download: 220 to 340 Mbps, very stable
Upload: 180 to 260 Mbps
Latency: 6 to 11 ms to Cape Town
Jitter: under 4 ms

Fast and rock-solid over the three full days we tested it. Zoom calls never froze. Large file uploads to S3 and Figma were instant.

Backup power

Cube shares the Cape Quarter building infrastructure, which includes a full building-scale UPS-plus-inverter system plus a generator for extended outages. During the stage-6 load shedding weeks in February 2026, we worked through a 4-hour cut without noticing anything except the mall lights dimming once. Wi-Fi, lights, HVAC, coffee machine — all stayed up.

Full stage-6 coverage confirmed.

Noise and focus

The main floor is quieter than Neighbourgood Mews but also more corporate-feeling. You get less ambient buzz, which suits focus work but makes the space feel more serious. There is no background music (or it is very low), which means conversations on the main floor carry further than they would in a louder room. This pushes most social chat into the kitchen or the breakout area, which is the intended design.

For deep work, 9 out of 10. For calls with a phone booth, 10 out of 10. For casual collaboration with another member at a shared desk, 7 out of 10.

Community

This is where Cube is weaker than Neighbourgood. The member mix at Cape Quarter is more local, more corporate, and older. You are more likely to share a kitchen with a South African accountant, a local legal consultant, or a mid-size SaaS founder than with another remote nomad. There is no social programming that we are aware of, and the member Slack is dead.

If you came to Cape Town for the nomad community angle, this space will leave you cold. If you came to Cape Town to work hard for three months on your own project, Cube is actually better for that because the signal-to-noise ratio for focus is higher.

The mall factor

Being inside Cape Quarter is the single most convenient thing about this space. In one building you have:

Full supermarket (Woolworths and Pick n Pay)
Virgin Active gym (day pass available)
4 cafés and restaurants
Pharmacy
Nail salon, hair salon, dry cleaner
ATMs, bank branches
Underground paid parking
Direct Uber pickup from the Somerset Road lobby

You can do a gym session, a laundry drop, a grocery run, and a 3-hour work block without leaving the building. For people on a tight week, this removes a lot of friction.

The downsides

No proper community. See above.
Underground parking is paid. R20 to R40 per day depending on time spent. Street parking around Cape Quarter is limited.
The mall corridor can be noisy on Saturday mornings when Cape Quarter is at peak shopping traffic. Inside Cube you do not hear it, but walking in and out of the space on a Saturday is a slog.
The fit-out is corporate. If you prefer characterful spaces, this will feel clinical.
No Sunday access unless you upgrade to the 24/7 member tier.

Who it is right for

Call-heavy nomads who need private phone booths on demand.
Long-stay remote workers who want a convenient all-in-one building.
People staying in De Waterkant, Green Point, or CBD who want a walkable office.
Corporate remote workers who want the serviced-office feel without the overhead.

Who should skip it

Nomads looking for a social, community-driven workspace.
Anyone who prefers industrial-loft aesthetics over modern-corporate fit-outs.
Short-term visitors who want to meet other nomads fast.

The verdict

Cube Cape Quarter is the best phone-booth-and-focus space in Cape Town. It is not the best community space, it is not the prettiest space, but if you spend 4+ hours a day on video calls and you need reliable infrastructure and privacy, nothing else in the city comes close. Pair it with a social evening routine somewhere else (see our nomad community guide) and it is the right mix.

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