Air to water works pretty well for sucking heat out of the intake, and keeping short tubing. The water takes a lot of heat to increase the temperature, so it stays cool, but ultimately, you have to put the heat somewhere i.e. the extra radiator. That radiator is only as good as the airflow that passes through it, so to match an air-to-air you'd basically have to have a radiator the same size, full of coolant, which is incredibly heavy.
Air-to-water works quite well where heat is in short bursts - ie street cars and drag racing. If the car is pushed hard for a long period, the air-to-air accomplishes the same thing, without being full of water, plus the extra water barrel.
If you want something to stabilize temperatures, look up "parrafin", "phase change" or "fusion" intercoolers. Basically it's an air to water intercooler filled with parrafin wax with no external radiator. It takes advantage of the fact that it takes much more heat to actually melt the parrafin to a liquid than it does to raise the temperature. Basically, depending on the type of wax, it will melt around 100 F - when the intake air reaches that temperature, the wax starts melting, and soaking up heat. The temperature will stay at 100 F until it's completely melted (at which point the air will continue to heat up). Cooling is accomplished by the cool intake air off-boost. Basically it works similarly to using ice in an air-to-water intercooler, except at a temperature higher than ambient. It can be used alone in a lightly boosted application where size and packaging are a concern, or with an air-to-air unit to lessen the effect of heat spikes, or heatsoak of the main intercooler.
If you just breezed by all that, here's a cool article on
Autospeed about it