I personally visited the New Istanbul Airport 5 times in the last 2 years.

I’ll start with the most important (for me personally)

Free wi-fi is available at the airport for an hour. More for money. In the authorization menu, you can choose: by phone number or by passport. We registered with a phone number. And after the free hour went for a walk. And we found nice stands in the duty-free zone, on which wi-fi was written. And at these counters you can get one more hour of free internet by registering with your passport. You just need to swipe your passport over the scanner, you do not need to enter anything. When you have a connection from 4 to 6 hours, an extra hour of free internet is very relevant.

The world’s largest airport hotel “Yotel Istanbul Airport”. Our flight was delayed by almost a day, and we decided to sleep in human conditions – we took a hotel. The cost is 80 EUR per day, for check-in you need to go through passport control to enter the city, so you must have a test on hand.

In general, I advise you to have a test with you in any case, even if it is not required in the country you are flying to, it is better to play it safe
in case of flight changes, connections, etc. If anything, then right at the airport you can do a PCR test for covid, if anyone urgently needs it. It costs 250 lire, the point is located near the 14th exit on the arrivals floor, the result is in 3-5 hours.

Decorated by Yotel in the style of a spaceship, the rooms are completely white with the ability to turn on the backlight
all colors of the rainbow. If children were flying with us, this would be their favorite place in the world 🙂 The feeling in the room is strange, like in the room, but you look out the window, and there is passport control and airport noise.

There are also IGA Sleepod capsules, but they are unreasonably expensive (9 EUR per hour) and inconvenient.

The best option that friends advised us is to ask your bank for the conditions for joining the Priority pass program. And after joining the program, choose 2 airports in the world where you can use this service. For 28 EUR you get access to food, entertainment, sleeping chairs and even a shower.

In general, you can sit and lie down on the carpeted floors in the hall or find Napzone with chairs and footrests and sockets for recharging the phone opposite the windows overlooking the planes.

Smokers, look for signs Teras, there are areas for nicotine addicts.

It is easy to find the transit zone, we are moving in the direction of the International Transfers sign. To get into the departure hall, you need to go through security again.

Note to transit passengers: Luggage storage is located in the arrivals hall, to the right of the exit from the arrivals area for domestic flights, if you stand facing the board with flight numbers. Opposite the storage room are rows of chairs with a waiting area for those who meet and a Sımit Saray cafe.
The cost is 60 lira for 6 hours. Attention, the change machine does not give. Pay per cell, not per piece. We got a suitcase and 2 backpacks free.

Employees of shops or cafes do not help tourists much. I won’t say that they ignore it, but they explain it in such a way that it’s better not to ask, otherwise you will get even more confused.

English is not the best, Turkish 🙂 An employee of the store will tell you about the goods in English without any problems, but as for the help in navigation… it’s useless.