unicode() vs. str.decode() for a utf8 encoded byte string (python 2.x)

Is there any reason to prefer unicode(somestring, 'utf8') as opposed to somestring.decode('utf8')?

My only thought is that .decode() is a bound method so python may be able to resolve it more efficiently, but correct me if I'm wrong.

From stackoverflow

• It's easy to benchmark it:

  >>> from timeit import Timer
  >>> ts = Timer("s.decode('utf-8')", "s = 'ééé'")
  >>> ts.timeit()
  8.9185450077056885
  >>> tu = Timer("unicode(s, 'utf-8')", "s = 'ééé'") 
  >>> tu.timeit()
  2.7656929492950439
  >>>
  

  Obviously, unicode() is faster.

  FWIW, I don't know where you get the impression that methods would be faster - it's quite the contrary.

  J.F. Sebastian : Fixed the example output.

  J.F. Sebastian : Python25: 3.0 vs. 0.9; Python26: 2.6 vs. 0.6 that is `unicode()` is about 4 time faster than `s.decode()`

• I'd prefer 'something'.decode(...) since the unicode type is no longer there in Python 3.0, while text = b'binarydata'.decode(encoding) is still valid.