I was in the exact same situation as you and decided to do a side by side comparison to make my final decision. I already had a 1000 model and purchased a mint used 2000 from my local GameStop to do comparisons on and come to a final decision.

I very much liked the new design and better L & R buttons. The lighter weight was also very noticeable and had a better overall feel to it. These thoughts are subjective but also nowhere near deal breaker taritory for 1000.

The issue that arose when comparing the exact same game in the exact same location of that game was the loss of imersion I felt when on the 2000. It is hard to explain but I will try. The new 2000 screen does a good job overall and the slight degraded color depth did not really bother me, what did annoy was what I can only describe as the refresh rate and screen tracking. For most games I tested your moving character would be crisp and detailed while traversing his location as he would normally be in the middle of the screen and tracking clearly, but it was easily noticeable that your background environments took a hit in clarity and lost that crisp look. Kind of like minor ghosting but not. I don't know how else to describe it. The 1000 unit kept up with your character and backgrounds while keeping them all equally crisp. This was especially noticeable in 2d sprite based games, but was also noticeable in 3d ones as well.

Due to this issue I overall felt a loss of immersion when playing the same game on the 2000, it felt more dry and like I was just going through the control motions but had little to nothing emotionally invested in what was happening. My mind felt subcontiously distracted by the detail loss in the backgrounds which in turn did not lend me to outing my full focus on the adventure I was playing and in the end I came away less engrossed with that particular play period.

In the end I returned the 2000, got my refund and have enjoyed my 1000.