Preview benefit refers to prioritize the selection of new items among distracters that have been presented early. The current paper reviews cognitive neural mechanisms of preview benefit. The inhibition of old items account attributes preview benefit to the suppression of the old items, while the attention capture by new onsets account argues that preview benefit is associated with the attention capture by the luminance onsets of the new items. Recent studies have tried to tackle this theoretical controversy in three perspectives: first, they investigate the relationship between preview benefit and the luminance changes of old and new items; second, they determine whether preview benefit can be affected by the relationship between the color of old and new items; third, they explore the boundary conditions that immunize preview benefit from the changing of old items’ shape. This paper suggests that both inhibition of old items and attention capture by new onsets contribute to preview benefit.