In an age of clickbait headlines and people getting news from Buzzfeed (facepalm) would there even be an interest in reviews following the scientific method? I mean, I have the relevant training, but I doubt running reviews on hardware I buy out of pocket would generate enough interest to make it worthwhile. I'd also never accept free review samples as I'm aware of how much free samples from drug companies influenced my colleagues' prescribing habits...
I wouldn't have a problems with review samples. In computer hardware it's hard for those parts to be rigged and in most of the market there are bigger players that would both be participating. So there is a less of a wine, dine, and then offload thing like what happens in the drug market. As for the more indepth review it doesn't have to be peer review study and still be detailed and well researched. Anandtech and Tomshardware are strong today because of the foundation that their founders established years ago. Toms still seems to float by on the previous clout. But Anandtech still lives by those ideals, they just seem to be missing that extra, secret sauce Anand brought to the table. That was his extreme desire once he knew something was happening, to why it was happening. The problem is Anandtech now is still great for technical information, that info seems separated a bit from the actual testing phase, which means they can see an issue, know its an issue, and then tell us its and issue. But it ends there. You apply slimmer scope for smaller review windows and you have rid yourself the wider "extraneous" testing. So when testing like this happens, where something you thought was going to be slower, was slower, but well slower than you thought, you never did the tests that might have told you that there was an issue or even where to look had you noticed it. Now they are in the same boat as the sites listed just above. Good sites, with good methodology, but more parrots of results in predetermined testing than investigative testing that some of the previous greats were.