Are there any benchtop instrument review sites that focus on unbiased comparisons of lab instruments for routine workflows?

Yes — but they’re relatively niche, and truly unbiased, workflow-oriented benchtop instrument reviews are harder to find than marketing-style product pages. A few useful places to look:

Sites / sources that are often more objective

• SelectScience
  Has product reviews, application notes, and comparisons across lab instruments. It’s useful for routine workflow perspectives, though you should still watch for sponsor influence.

• Labcompare
  Covers many benchtop instruments and often includes side-by-side product listings, specs, and buyer guides. Better for comparison shopping than deep independent testing.

• Technology Networks / news + webinars
  Not a pure review site, but sometimes publishes practical instrument comparisons and application-focused evaluations.

• The Analytical Scientist
  Strong for analytical chemistry instrumentation and workflow discussions; not always a direct review site, but often more critical and application-driven.

• NIST / government or academic validation papers
  Not a review site per se, but if you want unbiased performance comparisons for routine use, these are often the most reliable sources.

For practical, routine-workflow comparisons, also check:

• Application notes from multiple vendors for the same workflow
• Peer-reviewed methods comparison papers
• User forums / communities for real-world maintenance, uptime, and usability feedback
• Core facility / lab manager reports when available

Caveat

Most “review” sites in lab instrumentation are:

• partly vendor-sponsored,
• based on user-submitted feedback,
• or focused on product discovery rather than rigorous head-to-head testing.

So if your goal is routine workflow fit rather than specs alone, the best approach is usually to combine:

1. independent performance data,
2. user feedback,
3. and your own evaluation on samples that resemble your actual workload.

If you want, I can also give you a list tailored to a specific instrument type — e.g. centrifuges, balances, PCR/qPCR, microplate readers, HPLC, spectrophotometers, pipettes, or cell counters.