Diamond Cottage is a very good hotel located 5-10 minutes’ walk from both Karon and Kata beaches. Our room was very spacious with a king sized bed and nice seating by the window. The room had a balcony, although it was a little small and didn't have any furniture on it. The hotel staff were very accommodating and I'm sure they would have provided furniture if we'd asked, but in the limited time we spent in the room, we preferred to be inside using the air-conditioning than sitting in the heat on the balcony.
Breakfast was self-serve buffet and the choice of food was very good. We tried to sit by the pool once, but all sun loungers had been taken by 11am when we went down, so we walked 10 minutes to the beach instead, which is actually nicer than a hotel pool anyway, so we can't complain at that.
There are restaurants and bars very close by, with several less than 5 minutes from the hotel and a much larger choice available in Kata, which took us between 10 and 30 minutes to walk to, depending how far in to Kata we went. The main Karon restaurants were 20 - 40 minutes’ walk away, but we never went there at night as we preferred Kata.
We would stay here again.