Why we love the Capital One Venture X
I believe the Venture X has entrenched itself as the most solid force in the fierce premium travel credit card market, even against more well-known products like the AMEX Platinum card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. We opened the Capital One Venture X late in 2021 and it’s one of the few cards that is incredibly easy for us to justify keeping open year-after-year, even in light of the high annual fee ($395).
Why we like the card:
Easy-to-understand and extremely valuable Perks: The Capital One Venture X has been the perfect alternative to other travel credit cards and the frustrating direction they have been trending. Other card issuers (i.e. American Express, Citi, etc.) have tacked on numerous mediocre perks, like $10 monthly spending credits with apps I rarely use, and have used them to justify big annual fee increases. Then, Capital One launched a card that cost hundreds of dollars less, with features that I don’t have trouble using, like:
$300 Annual Travel Credit. You will receive credit on your first $300 in purchases through Capital One Travel. The credit is earned after your annual fee is posted and you have paid it off. This credit essentially reduces the $395 annual fee down to only $95. That’s a common annual fee on non-premium cards (like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card), but you get so much more with the Capital One Venture X Credit Card!
Annual bonus of 10,000 miles. Cardholders also will receive an annual bonus of 10,000 miles every account anniversary, worth at minimum $100 for travel when using the Capital One Travel Eraser (you can reimburse yourself for travel purchases, at 1 cent per point value), and likely even more if you use the miles to transfer to a travel partner.
So, these two perks essentially bring the $395 fee to $0 from square one!
Simple earning structure: Although there are a few point multipliers, like 10x points on hotels and car rentals and 5x on flights booked through Capital One Travel, Capital One makes it easy: 2x points on all purchases. This makes it a great card to give the person in your family who has no desire to fluctuate cards purchase-to-purchase to maximize category bonuses!
Lounge Access: As an included perk of holding the card, you’ll get unlimited access for yourself and two guests to more than 1,300 lounges, which include Capital One Lounges, the Priority Pass Lounge Network and the Plaza Premium Lounge Network. The Capital One Lounges are a relatively new creation, with only two lounges open as of writing (DFW & IAD), with Denver slated to open imminently. Until more open up, you’ll have to lean on Priority Pass and Plaza Premium lounges (at least those that are open to Capital One) to take advantage of this perk for a majority of your destinations. Priority Pass has 1,300 lounges available in 600 cities across 138 countries, so there’s a good chance you will get great use out of this perk!
What I am especially drawn to here is the fact that authorized user cards are FREE with the Capital One Venture X, and each authorized user receives a membership to Priority Pass and is also eligible to bring in two guests for free as well. So, this is the card we use to make sure our family of 4 can get into a lounge together (and can get even two additional guests in free as well)!
This is not about being “bougie”. Our frugal nature loves having a place to sit outside the hustle and bustle of the terminal and eat for free with the Capital One Venture X lounge benefit. Since airport food is usually heavily marked up, lounge access can save you quite a bit!
Amazing car rental insurance: Unlike most car rental insurance benefits on other cards, the Capital One Venture X coverage (when you book the entire car rental on your card) is primary auto rental collision damage waiver (CDW) coverage, instead of secondary.
It is important to emphasize that this isn’t a full insurance policy. Primary collision damage waiver (CDW) coverage covers you for the damage to your car, but doesn’t cover damage to other cars, or bodily injury. You may be covered for that with your personal insurance, but for those without a personal insurance policy that covers rentals, you might consider paying for more premium protection. We rarely do, but I did want to clarify that.
Note: To take advantage of this, you must decline the rental company’s collision damage waiver option, or a similar provision.
Unique Transfer Partners: Although we still value the transfer partners of American Express (i.e. ANA, Virgin Atlantic) and Chase’s transfer partners (i.e. Hyatt!) a bit higher than Capital One’s, they have a few partners that we value that most transferrable currency programs don’t have. Namely, Wyndham and Turkish Airlines. We love Wyndham to book Vacasa vacation rentals at 15k points per night (per room) and Turkish for United domestic flights or international flights on Turkish metal.
Capital One also has some of the core partners that we utilize routinely for international business class flights like Air Canada, Air France/KLM and Avianca and for domestic economy class flights like British Airways (to fly on American).
Twice we have transferred Capital One miles to Turkish to fly international business class on Turkish Airlines metal for just 45k miles per person one-way! That’s a screaming deal and the product is amazing!
Summary
We believe the Capital One Venture X is a great core credit card to add to your portfolio. With just two perks (the $300 annual travel credit and the 10k annual anniversary points), the $395 annual fee is wiped out and that’s before you use any of the other benefits, like the Global Entry/TSA Pre-check $100 credit, the lounge access, the amazing car rental insurance, or automatic Hertz’ highest level status, President’s Circle.
