Spacious new store. (Recommended)

Pros Much larger than the previous stores in Reading - far more convenient to have everything in one place. As a girl who loves her make-up and perfume I love that section of the store - it's brilliantly laid out, and I particularly like that there's enough space to have little circular displays for some of the more reasonably priced make-up brands. Extensive selection of products, and often some good reductions around sale time.

Cons Often quite long queues, but the cashiers are normally quite speedy which means it isn't a problem. Personally I've had a few problems purchasing quite basic items there with them being out of stock, but that's to be expected from a store in such a large town.

Great choice (Recommended)

Pros This is one of the biggest Boots stores I have ever been to. Right in the centre of Reading’s busy retail therapy quarter, this place sells everything from healthy salads to razor blades, from aspirin to hairdryers.
Admittedly, the queues can get very long downstairs, but boots seem to be aware of this and have introduced a new self-service checkout system, running in parallel to the traditional tills.
There are often plenty of deals based on the Boots loyalty scheme, which is one of the most generous on the market giving you 4p for every pound you spend on qualifying items.

Cons Queues can get quite long on Saturdays.

Tags chemist 

Boots the Oracle (Recommended)

Pros Large and very light which means everything looks ultra bright. All aisles are signposted so you know where to go without long weary walks. The cosmetics are all together meaning the woman can spend lots of time wandering from one area to another trying perfumes, having make overs and looking at all the new perfumes. The staff are normally very friendly and willing to show you the way should you need assistance. Shelves are always very well stocked.

Cons The aisles are fairly close together which makes it difficult when the shop is busy to get to the goods especially at Christmas when people have lots of bags and baskets in their hands.

Big Boots (Recommended)

Pros A massive Boots spread across two levels in the newish Oracle shopping centre. This is certainly an improvement on the old arrangement where there were two branches on opposite sides of Broad Street with only one or the other providing more specialist services such as photo (I believe one of the two still exists).

There is so much space that they have loads of everything. Upstairs has an optician, consultancy on various things and you can get your flu vaccine here.

There are loads of tills clustering in single queue groups which work well (I want to say something here about multiple M/M/1 queues acting as a system versus a single M/M/c queue where 1 < c < 13).

Cons At Christmas they spread the 'gift' type stuff across both floors and it's confusing where you should be looking for a particular thing.