For the ~80% of the people who never use more than 4 channels, there's little difference between a 4 channel radio and 6, 7, 8, 9, or 14 channels. However, in order to charge more $ for features that are useful to these people, the manufactures inflate the prices by only including them in radios with more channels. Futaba has bucked the trend a bit by building a 4 channel computer radio, but the thing only has memory for 4 planes. []