Disclamer: I'm no font expert, this is all my opinion as a user. Not a fan of the font to be honest. I was excited for a Helvetica replacement on OS X, but to

Disclamer: I'm no font expert, this is all my opinion as a user. Not a fan of the font to be honest. I was excited for a Helvetica replacement on OS X, but to this day nothing beats Lucida Grande, especially on non retina displays. I'd even say I prefer Helvetica to SF (and I was definitely not a fan of Helvetica as a UI font), after using iOS 9 for two weeks and then coming back to iOS 8. I can't describe it properly without typography knowledge, but I'd say it feels more elegant than SF (and other "modern" fonts like Roboto). Also there's the issue of readability, so I guess in that regard SF trumps Helvetica. Then again, I'm no expert so I don't really know.