Quaternions are used in animation for blending and composing transforms for a reason. You don't have to trust me, but yes... tried for maybe ten years and counting from doing graphics and animation work.
> If the quaternion is used to rotate several points (>1) then it is much more efficient to first convert it to a 3x3 Matrix. Comparison of the operation cost for n transformations:
> - Quaternion2: 30n
> - Via a Matrix3: 24 + 15n
So really it depends on what you're doing (admittedly here it is 3x3 not 4x4)
Its geometric product between motors is the equivalent of the 4x4 matrix product.
Although the basic computational complexity tells the story :
4x4 matrix product : 16 floats storage, 64 multiplies, 48 additions.
3D PGA versor product : 8 floats storage, 48 multiplies, 40 additions.