Unbalanced counts with shallow penetration?

Unbalanced counts are known to underestimate advantage in the beginning of a shoe and overestimate advantage in the end of the shoe. So wouldn't unbalanced count be inferior to comparable balanced counts when penetration is bad. For example assuming KO is comparable to HiLo at 5.0/6 wouldn't KO underperform HiLo when pen is 4.0/6? A.