Stayed here last night after going to Snow Patrol concert at MEN. Hotel is 5 minutes away from the railway station and right in the center of the trendy Northern Quarter.
The rooms are spacious, choice of soft or firm pillows. Spotlessly clean bathroom. Asked for high floor that has a great view of the city.
Got a breakfast included which includes sausage, scrambled eggs, beans, toast, croissants, cereal etc. Not sure why there was no bacon though?
All in all, I would highly recommend

We stayed two nights at the Holiday Inn Express Manchester Centre.
The room was very good, great size, comfortable, very good bathroom, as the hotel is quite new everything was in great shape.
The location is very good too, within a walking distance of most of Manchester attractions, with nice bars, restaurants and shops just around the corner.
The only problem was the breakfast, it is totally a British breakfast, but the way the space is organised creates a huge line, and one of the days we had to wait around 20 minutes....
Apart from this detail everything was great!

We visited the above hotel on 31st January for one night, as we were going to a show at the MEN arena. The twin room was clean and very comfortable and it was nice to have a large shower cubicle and not just a shower over a bath. The buffet breakfast was good with plenty of choice, although the servery area was cramped when many of the guests arrived at the same time.

We were looking for a reasonably priced hotel in Manchester, and booked this one (unknowingly- off of Hotwire-- it was listed as a 3 star--got a great deal this way-- 44 pounds/night).

I was expecting a very modest hotel, but was pleasantly surprised.
Everything was very modern and fresh and chic.
The shower was amazing actually, and the room was very clean.

Staff were very nice and gave me some good take away menus one night to order in, and extra towels were no problem to get.

Breakfast was included. We were expecting continental- but were surprised to find hot scrambled eggs, sausages and beans too.
Food was great but there was a line to the buffet when we slept in until 9:30 one morning.
(no line our other morning at 7:30!)

Also pleasantly surprised with the location-- although a little tricky to find, it was much closer to picadilly than expected-- 10 minute walk.

Would definitely stay here again.