One of the benefits to less lands is there total area is larger as a singular land. This causes them to last longer from throat erosion. Over all when looking at total displacement vs total bore area it works it to be close to the same but thinner lands tend to erode sooner and you are chasing sooner.
On the flip side with larger individual lands more bullet mass is displaced in a single spot and that has shown especially on smaller calibers and or faster twist to be harder on the jackets of trad cup-n-core bullets. Bullets were coming apart sooner.
Also some barrel makers used larger lands ratios. I recall bore scoping a certain popular AR barrel and it was very close to 50/50 land to groove ratio. They showed pressure sooner. But they the throats did last longer.
Personally while world records have been set with both even and odd setups I prefer odd as I feel the bullet is not being deformed inline with each other with opposing lands. I theorize that its easier on the bullet. Over all the difference is most likely minor. Then again when it comes to that threshold where bullets come apart vs being fine it seems very minor differences are all it takes.
Kirby Allen wrote a few posts on the subject yrs ago when he was active on the forum. He seemed to have a preference for 3 groove Lija barrels. Might want to do a search for those posts.
