The short answer is no, expensive product lines aren't better than regular drugstore brands, they are just more expensive. About salon brands, more expensive lines and products marketed as natural, the most important factor to a good product is simply what ingredients it has inside the bottle.

Some products are costly because they say they are natural, or are a salon line, and charge high prices for being natural or a salon lines, but in reality, they use nearly the same working ingredients as drugstore line conditioners. They just throw in a few extra exotic sounding plant extracts to charge more money for them (and no matter what it says on the bottle or commercial, nothing can heal hair. You can throw all the herbs and extracts on it you want, but they can't repair hair. They can make hair feel better, but that's not the same as repairing damage). I'm not saying there aren't some wonderful expensive products out there, because there are, and I have a couple I recommend on the site, but many charge more money than they need to. Often, drugstore and non drugstore lines all have nearly identical ingredients, just in different bottles and for different prices.

I do have to say that this technique absolutely will not work with any conditioner (expensive, cheap, marketed as natural, salon line, or otherwise). In fact, with the wrong kind of conditioner, you could end up with a mess or a sticky crunchy mess. But this is a matter of what ingredients are used, and there are good ones and bad ones that can be found in expensive lines and drugstore lines.

An ingredient is an ingredient. I guess that's why I do specifically recommend products, because I know these will work when you leave them in. Many conditioners have ingredients in them (like sodium chloride), that are fine if you will rinse them out. But for ones you leave in your hair, you have to be extra paranoid. Also, some conditioners have gel-like ingredients which will build up on your hair and make it sticky or crunchy when used in the amounts I use. Some aren't slippery enough to get a comb through your hair, so you could damage you hair trying to force a comb or brush through it. Some are too light, and after all the work of defining your curls, it will evaporate away, and you are left with puffy hair.

Many of the costly products that are marketed as natural are nothing more than oils, with a few extra exotic sounding oils thrown in to sound good. But oils are oils, and they all work basically the same. Because of this I don't like that many high price brands charge huge prices for ingredients that aren't really that special. However, what's important is using products that make you happy (well, and don't damage your hair).

The funny thing is that the ingredients in expensive and/ or conditioners marketed as natural are often the same ingredients that are in less expensive products. It's all about marketing. The manufactures can make more money if they repackage the same basic ingredients over and over and tell you they are for different things, like deep conditioning, conditioning, conditioners for dry hair, colored hair, damaged hair, permed hair and as a leave in. Often, these all have nearly identical ingredients, just in different bottles and for different prices. Or they throw in a few "gimmick" ingredients like exotic sounding herbs and oils that don't actually do anything for the hair, but sound like they must work because they sound so unusual, or are from so far away.

To look up the ingredients in your products, you can check them out in the Ingredients Dictionary.