What is missing in the announcement is a link to a quality / bitrate comparison with perceptual quality. Netflix seems to have a good automated perceptual metric. PSNR is still a popular metric because it's "objective", but codecs optimized for PSNR produce ugly, blurry results, like all the VPx codecs. That said, a codec with great PSNR can probably be tuned for great perceptual results.
The Vorbis people, who were involved in AV1, have produced some impressive perceptual improvements even with inferior technology (Ogg Theora, based on VP3.2), so they know what to do and how: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/theora/demo9.html
It's not going to be decipherable without some help to point you to what to compare and how to read the charts, but https://arewecompressedyet.com/ contains many such comparisons and is what they use to evaluate branches and features, etc. The Daala team has mostly focused on four metrics, of which PSNR is just one and probably the least valued. PSNR-HVS-M is the "hardest" one, but it also includes SSIM and another SSIM variant.
I'm sure one of the team will chime in shortly pointing to some recent results.
The Vorbis people, who were involved in AV1, have produced some impressive perceptual improvements even with inferior technology (Ogg Theora, based on VP3.2), so they know what to do and how: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/theora/demo9.html