In answer to the OP's question there is a big difference between the meters in the console emulator and a quality third party meter designed just for accurate metering.
Do you know anything about the console emulator meters?
What are they showing you exactly?
Is the ref level adjustable? If not you should be wondering what level 0 dB VU is calibrated to.
There are many differences in digital metering as there are differences in quality reverbs or eq's etc.. Having real hardware
(very high quality) VU's has sent me on a little quest to find the perfect VST VU meter.
You can get digital bar meters that are very complex and do a lot eg the
BlueCat meter but they can be expensive and have far more info that is needed about what it is they are measuring.
(I mean on tracks and buses. This meter is good on the mastering buss) With these VST VU meters you can swing them around the back to reveal a raft of controls for firstly the obvious eg calibration level. Then all the extra stuff. How they rise, how they fall, how they hold, what they do when they are up around 0 dB VU etc.. It goes on. There are standard settings but you can also adjust the way the VU meter for example is moving eg ballistics. There is something about the real VU ballistics that is hard to describe. It is a beautiful thing to watch. The
Klanghelm VUMT meters have got a great ballistic.
I think the VU meter in the PSP pack now has been improved. It seems to move a little better now. ie the ballisitc has been improved. It shows that everything is correct rms level wise and reference wise.
The Peak meter shows what you would expect peak wise. It will often agree with your internal DAW peak metering.
The RMS meter is interesting as it has two needles that show rms and peak values at once. Good for getting a glimpse into your dynamic range between your average rms levels and the peak transients.
(this meter is wild, and I am still trying to set its settings for the best effect and movement) I feel a separate Dynamic Range meter is better for this though. I use that in mastering and a Loudness meter too. You need all five in total to be serious about metering!
The cost is not a lot and they offer a lot of important information. The PSP meters have nice trim features built in for adding and subtracting gain to the signal and also very handy HPF and LPF filters with variable slopes would you believe. Good for cleaning things up here and there. The filters operate on and effect the signal by the way not just what the meter is showing you. Very cool.
So yes a little bit better and more features than your standard console meters for sure. These are some of the very first plugins you should invest in before anything else. Learn to understand and use them and your mixes will improve a million percent.