This is going to sound really negative..
Essentially, all I can think of is my pet peeves with your reviews. I suspect that this is because the well-written ones don't stick out like a sore thumb, producing a fairly even reaction. It's the really terrible articles/reviews that jump out.
I'm sorry, I'm going to name names occasionally, too- as it's clearer than speaking in general terms.
First, proof reading. Recently, the Reg has become a morass of "off of", dodgy apostrophes, "should of" and similar school-level howlers. I know that staring at an article written out to a deadline can make your eyes go a little funny, so maybe have a reasonably qualified sub-editor read through things before they go live? It just looks terribly unprofessional otherwise. You expect the commentards to be somewhat variable in quality, but the articles are written by supposed professionals (even if they're sometimes mad, drunk or both.. ahem). If your writers are techies rather than writers for the most part, that's fine- just get them some help.
Don't let people who don't understand what they're reviewing handle things, even if you find the resulting rhetoric amusing (see also A. Dabbs and his works). It can be rather irritating, to say the least- you're supposed to know more, not less, after reading a review.
Try to keep reviews factual- rather than as massive whinefests. If someone hates Company X and all their works, and is so inflexible that they will never give their products a fair crack of the whip, give that job to someone else. The worst examples that spring to mind here are generally Andrew Orlowski, who (if I may be blunt) tends to veer into tinfoil hat whining rather than giving people a clear idea of what does and doesn't work. Reviews are to evaluate products or services. Rambling opinion pieces that can be safely ignored are probably better suited to the conspiracy theories.
Photography! I've noticed a lot of reviews using stock shots from the manufacturers, lit and shooped to within an inch of their lives. Surely a couple of lights and a tripod aren't beyond the ken of you stout yeomans? I can manage that on my kitchen work surface, if I steal a lamp from another room- and the results are generally good. Doing better wouldn't be hard. Just make sure that you hit the focus point, and take a couple of white card shots so the colours aren't all screwed up, and it will really do wonders for your reviews. Heck, if you're talking about how icky and fingerprint-prone something is, show us!
Fact checking.. A lot of lazy assertions get made in this neck of the woods- no specific villains to name now, as quite a few folks do it, both in news and reviews. However, if, in a review, you criticise or laud a product for omitting or offering something unusual, maybe check that it's really the case, and that it works? Too often, lazy, rushed reviews are followed by a string of comments from owners saying "actually, it does support 256 bit cat whiffling, you just need to actually press the whiffling button and enable it". A review riddled with factual inaccuracies is not a great thing.
You asked about benchmarks- by all means include them where good and reproducible tests exist. Benchmarks are valuable when they are applied in a consistent and empirical measure over time, too, and include useful numbers of data points, but done well, they are a useful tool where relevant.
Tables of specs are good, especially in situations where it allows a quick glance comparison with competing products. This, however, would feed back into the points above about accuracy, and having an author who understands what they're doing. If specs aren't accurate (or at least as accurate as those from the manufacturer, natch), then they aren't useful.
Ratings- yes, if they are applied consistently and intelligently. An overall percentage or n/10 is nice, bonus points for a few sub-rating categorites like "performance" and "value", especially on longer-form reviews.
Sorry if that sounded like a huge attack, it wasn't intended to be, I am actually trying to be constructive. If I may, here's an example of a gadget review elsewhere that I enjoyed reading and found useful:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/divine-intervention-googles-nexus-7-is-a-fantastic-200-tablet/
The author is lucid, calm, factual and somewhat nerdy. It makes the review a pleasure to read.
Oh, one last thing (maybe more in a Columbo than Zombie Steve Jobs style).. In regards to "lucid", maybe if you're aiming at a more general, grown-up audience, it might be an idea to remove some of the rather incestuous self-satisfied baby talk that occasionally slips in- "fruity company", "fondleslab", "chocolate factory", "fanboi" and so forth. It's only a couple of rungs up the evolutionary ladder from angry twelve year-olds who write "micro$oft", "crApple" and the like. I know a few of your writers overdo it terribly as they feel like they're trying to copy a "house style". It used to be mildly amusing, when occasional and sparing. However, doing it all the time gets somewhat grating.
Anyway, I hope you're not feeling entirely dissed at this juncture, and there some useful points survive.. and thanks for bothering to ask.