You can customize these reports for advanced performance tracking. Though simple customization of basic reports is useful too, its the channels that really help in conducting a detailed performance analysis. Using channels you can get data broken down and presented in a number of different ways e.g. you could compare the performance of one set of pages against another, you could compare the performance of one ad format against another etc. There are various options available with channels and its just a matter of exploring them and using them to your benefit.
Besides viewing the reports online, you can even download your reports (in CSV format comma separated values format). If you dont want to login to your AdSense account very frequently, you can set up email-able reports which automatically get emailed to you or whoever you designate.