Ahah OK, sorry for that, I'm still a beginner when it comes to panoramic photography
Still, makepreview behaves differently than makepano, but I think it is because it does not support partial equirectangular panoramic. In my case, the panoramic 360° horizontal, but only ~90° vertical (not exactly, it depends).
Makepano handles this without any problem (the top and down cube faces are just full black), but makepreview stretches my image to fit a 360°x180° panorama, resulting in a distorted image. Well, that's my best guess at least.
In my makepano config, I only specify hfov=360, nothing more, and the script adapts itself beautifully to my partial panoramic image.