Better? I dunno about that. There are lots of really good facsimiles out there these days. What I really like about the UAFX plug-ins and pedals is that they feel and respond like a good tube amp. But I came to the pedal from the UA plugins, which are cheaper and equally as good. Your paying for the hardware and such as well as the digital guts of a plug-in.
I like that I can have it on a pedalboard, take it to a gig and get live what I hear in my little studio. Another thing I like about these UAFX pedals over something like a Helix or Tonex is that they do one thing well. With those more open platforms, you have 58932688 patches uploaded to their sharing service. 90% of them suck, and so you have to wade through all the crap to find the gold. The pedal on that board does a 1963 Vox AC-30 and nothing else. UAFX has 3 other pedals for different amps. A 55 Bassman, a 68 Marshall super lead and a 65 Princeton reverb.