Nope, what you feel is the difference between a cheap fork and a good fork.
For hard core off roaders there is nothing better than a coil spring (sized for your weight!) fork.
Air forks are a compromise. They work ok and are easy to work for a large range of sizes, but they can't react to multiple impacts and small inputs. They do great on single hit impacts like potholes and such, but bad in whoops and chatter.
I have a nice air fork on my Haibike, but its not nearly as nice as the sprung fork I had on my much cheaper Giant mtb that I replaced the spring and valving on.
A nice cheap upgrade would be a Roxshox lower end fork like the 32 that sell for $300ish retail or $100 on ebay.
