Luxury perks for a reasonable annual fee: A review of Capital One Venture X

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with new information.

The Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card represents the issuer’s first foray into the world of premium travel rewards cards and knocks it out of the park. With an annual fee that undercuts the competition and plentiful perks that are easy to understand, the card is nearly a no-brainer for travelers ranging from luxury seekers to the more budget-minded. Chase and Amex, take notice. Card rating*: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

* Card rating is based on the opinion of TPG’s editors and is not influenced by the card issuer.

Last year, premium cards like The Platinum Card® from American Express and Chase Sapphire Reserve took center stage with major updates, including the addition of new perks and statement credits — along with increased annual fees.

However, the Capital One Venture X stole the limelight altogether when it launched in November 2021, thanks to a phenomenal sign-up bonus and some incredibly valuable perks. Plus, with an annual fee of just $395, the Venture X is more affordable than its main competitors.

Rather than overcomplicating its benefits as other premium cards have done, the Venture X makes its perks incredibly easy to use. In fact, it’s simple to recoup the card’s yearly fee just by maximizing two of its primary perks.

Its current welcome offer is also pretty great and has a relatively low spending requirement.

If you’re considering the Venture X, here is everything you need to know before clicking that “apply” button.

Official application link: Capital One Venture X with 75,000 bonus miles after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.

The Capital One Venture X is a premium rewards card intended for folks looking to elevate their travel experience without having to pay an exorbitant annual fee.

The card offers up to $300 in annual statement credits toward bookings made through Capital One Travel, which makes up for the majority of its annual fee.

However, the Venture X also rewards cardholders with 10,000 bonus miles every account anniversary (for even more free travel), plus extensive airport lounge access, excellent travel protections and rental car privileges — and even extends some of these benefits to authorized users (you can add up to four of those users for free).

On the rewards side, Capital One dramatically improved its miles program over the past few years. The issuer added a variety of new airline and hotel partners, and you can now transfer Capital One miles — including those earned with the Venture X — at a 1:1 ratio to most of them, which makes the card even more of a standout in a crowded marketplace.

As for travel benefits, Capital One opened its first-ever proprietary airport lounge at Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW) last year, and it has more lounges on the horizon. Cardholders will be able to take advantage of gourmet grab-and-go food, sophisticated workspaces and even Peloton studios for a preflight workout. For the time being, cardholders can also register for Priority Pass and access to over 1,300 airport lounges worldwide.

Plus, Capital One is also set to have its own luxury hotel program with the Premier Collection, launching before the end of 2022. Cardholders with access to this program will get special access at hotels that have been “hand-picked for exceptional quality,” and enjoy benefits like free breakfast, room upgrades and on-property credits to use for free experiences or free food.

In short, it’s an exciting time to be a Capital One cardholder, and the Venture X is just another major reason why.

Related: From Peloton to premium eats: What you can expect inside Capital One’s airport lounges

Capital One Venture X sign-up bonus

The Venture X card’s sign-up bonus is 75,000 bonus miles after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. According to TPG’s latest valuations, 75,000 Capital One miles are worth $1,388 thanks to the outsized value you can get from transferring Capital One miles to the program’s airline and hotel partners.

Even if you don’t want to navigate the complexities of transferable points, you can still use your Capital One miles directly for travel at a rate of 1 cent per mile — making the sign-up bonus worth $750.

Related: How (and why) you should earn transferable points in 2022

• Statement credit: Up to $300 back in statement credit annually for bookings made through Capital One Travel.
• Anniversary bonus: 10,000 bonus miles every account anniversary, starting on your first anniversary (worth $100 toward travel).
• Lounge access: Complimentary access for cardholders, authorized users and up to two guests per visit to Capital One Lounges and to more than 1,300 Priority Pass lounges worldwide.
• Authorized users: Up to four authorized users can be added at no charge, and they also get Capital One Lounge access with up to two guests as well as Priority Pass.
• Rental car status: The primary cardholder as well as authorized users receive complimentary Hertz President’s Circle status.
• Global Entry or TSA PreCheck: Up to $100 in statement credits for either TSA PreCheck or Global Entry.
• Trip cancellation and interruption insurance: Up to $2,000 per person for you and immediate family members for prepaid, nonrefundable tickets.*
• Trip delay reimbursement: Up to $500 per person for reasonable expenses like hotel rooms, food, toiletries or clothes when your flight is delayed overnight or by six hours or more.
• Lost luggage reimbursement: Up to $3,000 per covered trip if the airline damages or loses your bags.*
• Cellphone protection: By using the card to pay your monthly wireless bill, you’re eligible for up to $800 in coverage per claim with a maximum of two claims and $1,600 per 12-month period. A $50 deductible applies per occurrence.
• Primary rental car insurance: Up to $75,000 for damage caused by collision or theft to a rental car.*
• Purchase, extended warranty and return protection: Up to $10,000 per claim and $50,000 per account on purchases; warranties extended by an additional year; returns up to $300 per item and $1,000 per account.*

* Benefits available on Visa Infinite cards.

Now, let’s look at the three benefits every cardholder should be able to maximize.

Capital One Travel: $300 statement credit

The $300 annual statement credit perk with Capital One Travel is simple. Every account year, you receive up to $300 in statement credits toward purchases made through Capital One Travel, including hotel bookings, car rentals and airfare.

However, the credit is not applicable to travel purchases made through any other channel. While that makes it more restrictive than the annual $300 travel credit available with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, it is still relatively easy to use and substantially offsets the true cost of the card’s $395 fee — as long as you actually take advantage of it.

There are some downsides to using a third-party booking service (notably elite perks are usually not recognized for hotels and rental cars). However, Capital One has made significant strides in the travel booking experience, most recently investing in booking platform Hopper and adding customer-friendly features like price-drop prediction and a best-price guarantee.

Anniversary bonus: 10,000 miles

The card’s other annual benefit is another one that’s simple to understand. Starting with their first account anniversary, cardmembers will receive 10,000 bonus miles each year.

According to the latest TPG valuations, 10,000 Capital One miles are worth $185, thanks to the potential value from airline and hotel transfer partners. However, if you were to redeem the 10,000 miles at a fixed value on travel purchases, you’d “only” get $100 in value, which is still pretty good.

Add that to the $300 Capital One Travel portal statement credit, and cardholders are looking at an easy $400 in value from their card each year, more than offsetting its $395 annual fee.

Lounge access (for authorized users, too)

Capital One’s lounge ambitions are clear. The issuer wants to take on the incumbent player in the space, American Express, by building out its own airport lounges and providing access to the Priority Pass global network of lounges as well. (For Capital One, that Priority Pass benefit includes affiliated airport restaurants, too — a notable differentiator over Amex, which doesn’t include these credits.)

Primary Venture X cardholders can enter Capital One Lounges and Priority Pass spaces with up to two guests for free.

What’s more, Venture X authorized users also receive complimentary access for themselves and up to two guests per visit to Capital One Lounges and to more than 1,300 Priority Pass lounges worldwide. You can add up to four authorized users for free, which means one Venture X account with four authorized users added could get 15 people into airport lounges around the world, which is a pretty fantastic perk.

How to earn Capital One miles

The Venture X accrues miles at the following rates:

• 10 miles per dollar on hotels and car rentals booked via Capital One Travel.
• 10 miles per dollar spent on cars booked through Turo (through May 16, 2023).
• 5 miles per dollar on flights booked via Capital One Travel.
• 2 miles per dollar on other purchases.

This simplicity builds off of the $95-per-year Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, a product that has been around for over a decade. In that way, the Venture X represents the best of both worlds — high earning potential on travel purchases, specifically, but a solid everyday earning rate that’s easy to keep track of.

Read more: Credit card showdown: Capital One Venture vs. Capital One Venture X

Over the years, Capital One has made significant improvements to its mileage program, including shifting from solely fixed-rate redemptions to adding a host of airline and hotel transfer partners, most of which now convert at a 1:1 ratio.

Here is the full list of transfer partners and their respective transfer ratios from Capital One:

By leveraging transfer partners, there are a number of sweet-spot redemption opportunities, including economy flights to Hawaii for just 7,500 Capital One miles by transferring to Turkish Miles & Smiles and redeeming for United flights, business-class flights to South America for 50,000 Capital One miles transferred to TAP and redeemed on United, and much, much more.

Related: Everything you need to know about the Capital One Venture X $300 travel credit

Fixed-value redemptions

If you consider simplicity more important than cent-per-point value, Capital One also offers several fixed-value redemption options. Those include:

• Book travel: You can book travel directly through Capital One Travel at a value of 1 cent per mile.
• Pay off travel purchases: You can pay off travel purchases made in the past 90 days on your card statement without having to worry about the complexities of loyalty programs. You’ll again get a flat value of 1 cent per mile.
• Redeem for gift cards: You can use miles for gift cards at the same rate of 1 cent per mile.
• Redeem for cash back: You should do everything possible to avoid this option, as it will only provide a redemption value of 0.5 cents per mile.

With a $395 annual fee, the Venture X falls within the premium travel cards category. Two main competitors come to mind: the Amex Platinum and the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Both cards also earn transferable points currencies: Amex Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards, respectively.

However, both of these cards come with significantly higher annual fees — $550 for the Sapphire Reserve and $695 for the Platinum (see rates and fees).

Amex Platinum

The Capital One Venture X comes out ahead of Amex Platinum in one key area: simplicity.

The Amex Platinum has a complicated assortment of benefits and perks, including at least 10 different built-in statement credits that are allotted in time frames ranging anywhere from monthly to every four years, making them difficult to keep track of. While you can offset the card’s hefty $695 annual fee with these included credits, it is a lot to manage — not to mention some of these perks might not be useful for certain cardmembers.

On the other hand, while Capital One has grand ambitions with its own lounge network, Amex has a significant head start with Centurion Lounges at more than 20 airports, as well as the Global Lounge Collection, which includes Priority Pass, Delta Sky Clubs (when flying on the same day with Delta) and more. Certain flyers who hit the lounge a lot might prefer the Amex Platinum for this benefit — though it’s not always the best experience.

Chase Sapphire Reserve

Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholders earn bonus points at similar rates to the Venture X when booking through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal, with 10 points per dollar on hotel and car rental purchases and 5 points per dollar on airfare. However, they also earn 3 points per dollar on other travel and dining, which beats the Venture X.

The Ultimate Rewards program has some great transfer partners that Capital One does not, such as United MileagePlus and World of Hyatt. In addition, the Chase Sapphire Reserve has a dedicated 1.5-cent redemption rate for travel booked through the issuer’s cardholder portal, significantly surpassing the 1 cent per mile you get with the Venture and Venture X cards. And the annual $300 travel credit on the Sapphire Reserve is much easier to use.

That said, the Chase Sapphire Reserve’s $550 annual fee is much higher than the Venture X’s. Given that it’s been around for a few years now, you also might already have it or its mid-tier counterpart, the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card.

In that case, the Venture X makes a lot of sense, since it allows you to stack further statement credits and perks while accumulating points in another valuable transferable points program. And when it comes to travel rewards, having more options and more flexibility for redeeming your points is always good.

Chase is also setting up its own network of lounges, with the first one open at Hong Kong International Airport (HKG). However, all of Chase’s new lounges are expected to be available to both Chase Sapphire Reserve cardmembers as well as members of Priority Pass. That means that even Venture X cardholders will most likely get access to Chase’s lounges, but for a lower annual fee than the $550 that the Sapphire Reserve.

Official application link: Capital One Venture X with 75,000 bonus miles after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.

For rates and fees of the Amex Platinum Card, click here.

Additional reporting by Ryan Wilcox, Eric Rosen and Christina Ly.