There are significant differences even within one product range from one manufacturer. With the AS332L Super Puma, when flying against the trim for short term over-rides (eg in turbulence), the aircraft was quite stable and there tended to be a fairly direct relationship between stick displacement and pitch or roll attitude. On the EC225 as soon as you operate against the spring trim it goes into a kind of SAS mode and is fairly unstable, especially when you add in the light cyclic forces and the non-linear forces that arise from the breakout force from the trimmed position. All in all it is not easy to fly against the springs in the cruise and I advocate using the cyclic trim release button (or more sensibly be fully coupled with upper modes!)
So I think the moral is, try the different methods and then stick with the one that works best for you on your particular machine.
HC