In my opinion, the peer review Assignment module plugin is definitely my favourite, and easier and more practical to use than the Workshop module. It's one of the many reasons I'm still using Moodle 1.9 for most of my needs.
On the laziness side of things ;) I think it can reduce your workload in that respect since peer grading and feedback tends to be fairly comparable with teachers' in the research that I've read and from personal experience. However, learners need a fair amount of guidance in the beginning to help them to develop their analytical and critical thinking skills, and for each assignment, I recommend getting the learners themselves to define the marking rubric that they're going to use. This helps them to understand the task/assigment objectives better and have a clearer idea of what makes a good/successful outcome, before they even attempt the task/assignment (rather than trying to second-guess you from the grades and feedback you give). They'll need a strong context and more than likely some examples of similar (but not too similar) tasks/assignment outcomes to look at so that they can co-construct their marking rubrics.
I think it's actually a lot more work initially but it pays dividends in cultivating learner autonomy and higher order thinking skills. Only after they've got the hang of peer review, can you withdraw the instructional scaffolding, and your workload will lighten up. How long this will take will depend on the cognitive demand of the tasks/assignments and the current abilities of your learners.
I hope this helps!