At least the explanation sounds like erroneous believe.
Meander antennas achieve poor performance because they are electrically small and have a low radiation resistance. In a first order they can be expected to behave similar as other antennas of same size. But the design details of an inductor loaded antenna matter to some extent, a cyclindrical wound coil may be slightly better.
Both are meandered differently, and both have about the same antenna gain. However, the antenna that is better matched by more meander turns (closer to lambda/4) has less loss in the matching network, so overall it performs better.