Who are you BS'ing? I own an iPad 2 and the thing is a dog just browsing with Safari and would sometimes just crash and close the browser on sites like theverge.com. iOS 7 was less laggy but even iPhone 4 I just traded in had the same issue. Lucky I even got $25 for it considering it suffered from the famous screen yellowing over time. The iPad is a curse since it's a family gift so I can't junk it.
I have the original mini which has the same specs as the iPad 2 and it's still running just fine on io9 beta. Now I also don't really push it, that's what my air 2 is for, but I certainly wouldn't call it a dog.