4 is expressed as 2^2 because prime factorization is a good practice because it helps identify common terms in the numerator and denominator of any fraction and therefore ensures that cancellations are properly recognized. 

For example, when working with fractions it is obviously apparent that the "sevens" in both the numerator and denominator may be cancelled while it may be less obvious that "91/28" has any cancellations at all. After expressing 91/28 in its prime-factored version, (7 * 13) / (2*2 * 7), there is an obvious cancellation.

The continued presence of prime factors represents on the one hand a best practice because its use does eliminate many cancellation omissions and errors but, on the other hand, it is not intuitive and most students are not going to continually apply prime factorization in their work.

I would always recommend that a solution begin with 'a few steps' and only add additional solution steps when the solution is intuitive.  So click on the 'Options' tab and the number of solution steps is configurable.