As someone who writes weekly pipe tobacco reviews I definitely think reviews can be a valuable part of anyone's pipe journey, but the value of a review varies depending on who's reading it and why.
My review process is to smoke a blend every day for a week and start writing down notes on it every time I smoke it after the first couple days, then do the full review at the end of the week. It's a valuable process for me because it helps me really get to know a blend and form a solid opinion on it, from it's smoking mechanics to the flavor, nicotine strength, whether or not others find the room note appealing or unpleasant, how the blend works with my mouth chemistry, and so on. The whole shebang is really helping me narrow down my cellar from 100+ blends to just the ones I really like the best and would like to hold onto and continue smoking.
Forming my own personal opinion on a blend is only half the value of the review though, the other half is trying to provide value to reader by imparting as much objective information as I can on the blend and inject some humor along the way. Obviously everyone is going to smell and taste things a little differently, so I try not to get into too many subtle flavor notes, but I can point out what the basic dominant flavors are; such as whether a Virginia is more bright and grassy, citrusy, leaf litter'y, or tea-like, or whether a Burley is more nutty, chocolatey, barnyard musty, and so on. Whether a dark fired blend is more barbeque pit smokey or fireplace smokey, and whether any Latakia that might be in a blend is more camp firey, incense'y, leathery, or musky. Just giving reader an easy to understand idea of what the overall flavor profile is like that hopefully they'll be able to taste too without getting too into the weeds with subtle notes.
Nicotine content can be a little subjective as well, like what I may find to be a "medium" might be someone else's "enough to tranquilize an above average sized rhinoceros", but I do try to be as objective as I can and rank everything on a scale of mild to extra strong. I can also share what my non-smoking family thought of the room note, whether the retrohale stings or is smooth and pain-free, how easy or difficult a blend is to keep lit, whether or not it needs any dry time before smoking, and other such potentially useful information to help the reader decide whether or not a blend might be for them.
I don't know whether or not folks actually find my reviews useful, but they have certainly been useful for me in figuring out what I like and don't like in pipe blends, and I do hope that if nothing else folks at least find them entertaining to read.
