The 5e playtest rules specify all distances and areas in feet, not in squares. Unlike 4e, the game does not assume that you're using a grid and miniatures. In that spirit -- and despite my prodigious collection of miniatures, Dungeon Tiles, poster maps, GameMastery Flip-Mats, and other such paraphernalia -- Amy and I conducted our playtest encounters entirely in the theater of the mind, so to speak.
The experience reminded me a great deal of my countless 2e Druid Cycle adventures with Scott and Jason, and later Kevin and Timothy. On occasion we would set up some metal miniatures on a blank sheet of printer paper to show relative position, but for the most part we just used our imaginations. It worked then, and it still works now. I didn't miss the grid. Interestingly enough, Amy, whose D&D experience is limited to grid-based 3.5e and 4e, missed it more than I did.
The encounters from our playtest sessions, however, were relatively simple in their setup and involved only first-level characters and analogous monsters from the playtest Bestiary (fire beetles, dire rats, orcs, etc.). Adding more players, varied terrain, complex monsters, and other features would make for a more rigorous test of gridless combat. That, I suppose, will have to wait until a future iteration of the playtest rules.
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