For those curious, Here is a sample of three cubes, the top row shows them as the look
the bottom shows their wires..
Cube on left is a normal cube edge loops cut into it and no changes to the normals
Middle cube is the same one, duplicated with Softened normals on entire object.
the Right cube is the same as those two only with the smooth preview on.
as you can see there isn't much difference in the way that Center and Right cube look it only comes into play with close shots, or shows that the sharp corners on the cube are seen edge on and become apparent.
Obviously this will not work for larger pieces of a hero model, but for smaller detail pieces, or for mid range shots, it works really well.
And all you have to do is toggle smooth to get the effect, since you still use the same base mesh,
Saves a lot of time on renders, view port navigation ect and give you a very good representation of an actually smoothed model.

G-man