New-Object PSObject vs. PSCustomObject

Either approach can be used to take a set of values from a collection of PowerShell objects and collate them into a single output. As well, both avenues will output the data as NoteProperties in the System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject object types. So what’s the big deal between them?

With the New-Object method in PowerShell v1.0, you have to declare the object type you want to create and add members to the collection in individual commands. This changed however in v2.0 with the ability to use hashtables:

This saved a lot of overhead in typing and provided a cleaner looking script. However, both methods have the same problem in that the output is not necessarily in the same order as you have it listed, so if you’re looking for a particular format, it may not work. PSCustomObject fixed this when it was introduced in v3.0, along with providing more streamlining in your scripts.

As demonstrated, your output will always match what you have defined in your hashtable. Another advantage of using PSCustomObject is that it has been noted to enumerate the data faster than its New-Object counterpart. The only thing to keep in mind with PSCustomObject is that it will not work with systems running PSv2.0 or earlier.