I've used a variety of brands without difficulty. It looks like a big difference is the amount of nylon holding material. Some have quite short nylon blocks. When I use the smooth ones, I lightly scored the smooth surface with my Dremel cutter. I also have a male and female together when I solder to maintain alignment, and I try to solder quickly to avoid melting, or loosening the metal. Small wattage or small tip with poor heat mass doesn't work well. Early in electric RC, in the NiCad days, I even had trouble with Dean's from too low heat for too long. 14g or 12g silicone wire is quite a good heat sink for a small iron. There could be different metal in the tabs or different thickness of gold coating but I haven't found evidence of that.
I don't order the ones with short nylon as my fingers don't like taking them apart.
But I can't disagree with William that the real Dean's are the best.