We had a similar decision last year. We mvoed into a house with a neglected, horribly bumpy small triangular garden full of moss, as we have large oak trees which shade our garden for most of the day. It's great for kids playing outside in as after about 11am I don't need to put sunscreen on DD but grass just dies. We needed to level the garden and rip out lots of stunted diseased shrubs and there was a tiled area at the end which was in a terrible state... and then the decision was do we lay down new turf and spend hours and ££ watering it, fertilising it, keeping it nice, etc, and probably still only have it last a few years, or get astroturf. Our DD was 18m so we hopefully had many years of small children playing out there (so a meadow is not realistic especially in our super shaded area), we plan to stay in this house long term, and we have little time to spend on maintenance - i would much rather spend the time tending flowers and looking after a vegetable garden than grass. We went for the astroturf and at the same time got a custom made long border from Woodblocx which we have filled with insect loving plants and then at the tip of the triangle we have a veg patch which currently has carrots ,peas, beans, courgettes and salad in. The patio has tomatoes, cucumbers and yet more flowers and some fruit bushes in pots. The garden is full of bees and insects!
The astroturf has been great, as someone else said it looks pretty real from the windows but once you get close you can see it isn't (and in a drought when everyone else's lawn is a different colour!). Most of the time the colour is exactly the same as NDN lawn. DD can run in and out all day and we don't get mud everywhere. it is low maintenance, the only maintenance we really have to do is due to the trees - DH rakes over it every weekend or so (obviously more work in the autumn), and ridiculously I think we will need to actually hoover it at some point because of all the little bits of leaf litter that are getting down into the "pile" which will give a medium for weeds or tree seeds to sprout eventually.
With our little corner of suburban garden I don't feel so bad about the lack of wildlife aspect, especially as the choice for us was plain turf or astro turf; as I said, we planned the long border and other plants to try and make up for it and I would say that our garden now with astroturf and loads of new flowers and plants has much more life in it than it did as a patch of mossy turf and half dead old shrubs. What I felt bad about was the huge slab of plastic I was buying and which will eventually (hopefully not for 15-20 years) have to go into landfill. Although it seems a huge amount, when I look at the amount of plastic we get through as a household each month, even as a fairly conscious consumer who does try to minimise packaging waste, always looks for secondhand first when buying things ... that slab of plastic doesn't seem so bad, over it's expected lifespan.
Anyway. That's our point of view on it. It was expensive (especially with a triangular garden!) but it was definitely the right decision for us.