Which Premium Credit Card is Right for YOU? - CSR VS Amex Plat VS Venture X

hey credit Warriors welcome to the show and in this video I want to take you through a battle to end all battles in the credit card space the battle of the premium cards these are what I call tier four cards in my five Tier credit card ladder system that I invented to categorize levels of credit cards in the US market these are the highest tier that regular people can get into before you start getting into invite only black cards is that a black card no it's not Kanye we're looking at tier four cards in this video all right so we are going to compare the three tier four cards that earn transferable points from the major Us credit card issuers that are publicly available I.E you can actually still apply for them there are a few others like the Ritz Carlton card from Chase actually that one doesn't earn transferable points it's marott points well I guess they are transferable anyway moving on um or the city Prestige from City that people are grandfathered into but since you can't apply for them I won't include them so the cards we will focus on in this video are these three the MX Platinum the Chase Sapphire reserve and the capital 1 Venture X and I will split these into categories for the comparison so let's look at our first category which is annual fees also quick shout out to ask sebie for giving me the idea to show this as an Excel spreadsheet it's way easier than creating graphics for it in the video edit so the AMX Platinum is $695 a year the Chase Sapphire Reserve is 550 the capital 1 Venture X is $3.95 so the annual fees are offset by credits on all three of these cards let's look at Travel related credits first since those are the ones I can see people easily getting value out of since these are travel credit cards I mean if you have one of these in the first place it means that you are interested in travel so on the Platinum we actually have three travel credits $200 for Airline fees like check bags Lounge dayes Etc $200 for the fine hotels and resorts collection or the hotel collection but you must stay two nights and $200 for Uber which you can also use with Uber Eats that one is $15 per month $25 in December so it's a total of $600 and thus it brings the effective annual fee down to just $95 if you use them all on things you would have spent money on anyway on the Venture X we have a $300 travel credit for Capital 1 Travel if you book one paid trip per year through Capital 1 it's pretty easy to use and it takes the effective annual fee down to $95 as well and on the sapphire Reserve we have a $300 travel credit for any travel it doesn't have to be booked through Chase even things like New York City subway passes trigger it Chase says it is the quote most flexible travel credit available and I guess they're right so that takes the effective annual fee down to $250 now I'm presenting it this way because these travel credits are the ones I believe most people will get use out of every year for me on the platinum in 2023 I maxed out the fine hotels and resorts credit and the Uber credit and I used most of the airline fee credit on Lounge get passes and check bags with Delta in the past when I had the sappire Reserve I would use the full $300 travel credit every year no problem and I've never had the Venture X but I think their $300 travel credit is kind of in the middle easier to use than AMX but a little harder than Chase but now let's look at some other kinds of credits now all cards give up to a 100 credit for Global Entry or TSA pre-check every 4 years the sappire reserve allows you to use that for Nexus 2 which is a card that gives you expedited entry into Canada either at airports or when you cross the land Border in a car so the CSR wins on this one it has you know one more option than the other two and most people use this Credit in their first year so the effective annual fee for the first year goes down to minus $5 on the platinum and Venture X and $150 on the sapphire Reserve now let's add in some extra credits that I'm not sure how many people will actually be able to use but I'll show you the potential value on each cut on the Platinum we have a $240 digital Entertainment Credit a $189 Clear Credit a $300 Equinox Gym credit a $155 credit for Walmart plus membership and a $100 saxs Fifth Avenue credit it's $50 every 6 months most people won't use all of these for example I use the digital Entertainment Credit and the sax credit but I never have used the $300 Equinox credit and although I used the $155 Walmart Plus Membership credit I don't really consider it providing that much value to me I use it for the gas discount at mobile mainly and in a year and a half that it's been around I've saved $128 which doesn't even add up to the credit amount for a whole year so it isn't really worth a full $155 to me maybe half that but to you it might be but anyway the effective annual fee with maxed out credits not including the first year Global Entry is minus $889 I.E the car is paying you $889 to hold it on the Venture X you get given 10,000 Points each anniversary which is worth at least $100 and then there is also a $140 prior membership this is a travel agency and there's actually one other membership for this thing called the cultivist as well some art museum thing which they say is $220 in value but it's only for 6 months for you to try out so I'm not going to count it thus our effective annual fee after year 1 on event X is that they pay you $154 to have the card if you genuinely get value out of all the things that are offered now let's look at the sapphire reserve the CSR advertises $1,200 in Partnership value but in reality they're including things like priority pass membership in this which is $469 for unlimited if you actually bought it but most people wouldn't buy it anyway since you can just get it from a credit card so I'm only going to include things that I feel actually give dollar value that may offset some people's spending so I'm including the lift pink membership the door Dash subscription plus the $5 per month door Dash credit the instacart membership and the $15 per month instacart credit now some of these things have expiry dates and some you only get a year of I know I didn't allow that six-month thing on Capital One so you may think this is unfair but here I'm going to make a rule I will count any credit that you get for a year or more so that takes us to $658 worth of additional credits and an effective annual fee of -48 I.E they are paying you $48 a year to have the card those figures for all three cards are really theoretical though you have to work out your value by looking at which credits you would actually use let's now look at authorized user fees on the Platinum it is $195 for authorized user cards it used to be 175 up to three but that is no more as of August 17th 2023 on AMX cards though children under 13 can't be added as an authorized user and this will be important later on the other two Banks don't have minimum ages then on the Venture X it is free to have authorized users and you can add up to four and on the Safar reserve it is $75 each all right let's now move on to benefits and then we'll be looking at Point earning but first guys I know you're watching this cuz you want to get great value out of your credit cards in that case I think you will love the sponsor of today's video max rewards it's an easy to ous smartphone app that soft connects to all of your Banks so it can display data on all of your credit cards even if they're from different issuers in one place so you can view your balances your transactions your points and rewards balances all inside one app now Max rewards over the past year did have a little bit of difficulty connecting to chase that was the one bank they had a problem with but the fix is now in for that so if you download the latest version of Max rewards it can connect to chase they had to sacrifice a very small amount of functionality for that but it is a permanent fix so it does now connect to chase it's also really useful with American Express cards if you have the Gold version of Max rewards because it automatically activates all of your MX offers for you so you never miss a deal and you might even save some money without even knowing it the cooler thing is when you activate all your AMX offers new AMX offers you never even knew existed appear in your account and it'll activate them too you can really save a lot of money and get some great deals with it and guys you can get a free month of Max rewards gold with my link below or you can just download it through my link and check out the free fee features of which there are many all right guys let's look at the benefits of these cards which is going to include lounge access that is one of the biggest benefits but then we also have things like car rental benefits Hotel statuses and hotel collections we'll look at lounge access first so lounge access is one of the coolest perks of any premium credit card it can make your journey or stop over much more comfortable all of these cards offer unlimited priority pass membership this is the one that would cost $469 if if you actually paid for it it gives you access to over 1,500 airport lounges but these priority pass memberships are not 100% the same the platinum and the sapphire Reserve allow you to take two guests in with you whereas the Venture X gives you unlimited guests however the platinum and the Venture X exclude non- Lounge experiences such as restaurants and Spas whereas the sapphire Reserve includes them the way it works with restaurants is that they give you $28 off your bill sometimes for you and sometimes for you plus a guest it depends on the restaurant I found it very useful as an option especially if the lounge is full or the airport doesn't have a priority pass Lounge now let's look at Plaza premium lounges this is another Lounge group smaller than priority pass but nevertheless very useful especially in Canada and Europe I've been to the plaza premium Lounge in London I've also been in Hong Kong and found them both to be great the MX Platinum allows you to get into Plaza premium lounges just by showing the card as does the Venture X but the Chase Sapphire Reserve does not however 60 Plaza premium lounges recently joined priority pass or should I say rejoined because they were in it before and then they left and now they're back so you can get into some Plaza premium lounges with the CSR using its priority pass membership but not all next we have the Centurion Lounge of which there are 13 Us locations and a few International ones too this is obviously only available to Holders of the platinum card out of these three you used to get free guests but now it's only if you spend $75,000 on your card in a calendar year otherwise they're going to be $50 per person you may be able to get around it by adding additional authorized users but this won't work with young children since remember AMX only allows authorized users who are 13 years old or older then we have the capital 1 Lounge this currently has three locations and obviously only the capital 1 Venture X card can get you into those then last but not least the Chase Sapphire Lounge there are now four Lo locations with several more coming soon obviously this is only for Sapphire Reserve card holders and their guests but you can actually get in once per year with the priority pass cards provided by the AMX platinum and Venture X cards I think it's Jason's way of getting you used to it so you all go and apply for the Safi Reserve then on the Platinum we have two more that the others don't have the Delta lounges which currently get unlimited visits and then guests of $50 you can pay that with the Airline credit if you set your airline to Delta but as of February 1st 25 that changes to 10 visits per year that's going to be enough for most people but if you fly Delta a lot maybe it could become an issue then in addition the AMX Platinum also gives you Lanza lounges which the other two don't so we can see that the Platinum has the most comprehensive lounge access the Capital One Venture X is second and also the Capital One Venture X gives you free authorized users which get all the same lounge access as well so that could provide you way more value if you have a big family but if you you value priority pass restaurants then you may want to look at the Chase Sapphire Reserve all right let's now go through some other benefits Hotel collections all three cards now actually offer a Hotel Collection AMX actually offers two the fine hotels and resorts collection and the imaginatively named Hotel Collection just be aware that with the Hotel Collection you have to stay two consecutive nights in order to get the benefits together these collections feature 2,200 hotels Chase has the luxury hotels and resorts collection which is over 1,000 hotels and the capital 1 Venture X gives you the premiere collection which is relatively new and they don't actually say how many hotels are in it at least I couldn't find that information so I'm guessing it's probably quite a lot less maybe under a thousand typically benefits at these hotels will include daily breakfast for two here we're using that benefit at the breakfast buffet at the balagio in Las Vegas a $100 credit for something during your stay either food and beverage like room service I use that for a great meal at the Conrad in DC or it could be for spa treatments Etc then you may get a room upgrade for example at the theront Orchid in Hawaii I was upgraded from a garden View room to an ocean view room so anyway there are a load of extra benefits from these collections I have only used fine hotels and resorts from AMX but I assume the others are similar however AMX is the largest including double the number of hotels that chase has all right those are Hotel collections but what about hotel status well this is easy the AMX Platinum gives you Hilton and Marriott Gold status Hilton gold is way more useful than Marriott Gold by the way and the other two cards well they give you nothing then what about car rental benefits well the MX Platinum gives you high status with Herz National and Avis I use National and I find it great you can pick any car from the executive area the Capital One Venture X currently gives you Herz president Circle but there is some fine print saying that this benefit will be ending at the end of 2024 it's likely it will get renewed or another status added but that is the case for now then the sapphire Reserve gives you National Avis and silver car then what goes along with that is collision damage waiver so that you can decline the car rental place's upsell of insurance they all provide CDW but only the Venture X and the sapphire Reserve are primary which is what you want since it means that you don't have to claim on your own personal car insurance first you can just directly claim on the credit card insurance so AMX Platinum unfortunately secondary CD all right now let's finally get into the point earning on these cards plus Redemption options and then we'll talk about the welcome bonus so first of all here are the main earning categories so you can see the AMX Platinum is just 1X on non-category span 1X on dining really the only award you know High category is 5X on flights either direct with Airlines or thex travel and also the hotel collections or you know basically booking prepaid hotels through AMX travel has to be prepaid to get the 5x then on the ventx it's basically 2X on everything so it's a great non-category card uh and then they do have five points per dollar on flights but it has to be booked through Capital One and 10 points per dollar on their Hotel Collection Sapphire Reserve it's just one point per dollar on non-category spend but it is 3x on dining which is pretty good 5x on flights through Chase and then the same thing with the Hotel Collection 10 points per dollar and then with the reserve you do get three points per dollar on just regular travel and that's a pretty broad category including things like Ubers and Subways in addition to flights and hotels in redem ring points they all have a base value of 1 cent per point but there are some exceptions so on the AMX Platinum if you redeem for hotels uh not in the fine hotels and resorts collection you get about 75 cents per Point okay with fhr it's 1 cent per point and on the sapphire Reserve if you go through their travel portal okay so Sapphire Reserve it's 1 cent per point if you redeem for like cash back but if you book something through their travel portal it's 1.5 cents per point for hotels or flights uh that is the great advantage of the sappire Reserve especially for booking economy class flights for business class or first class you normally get better value if you transfer points out to a partner so for transferring points they all feature a ton of different airlines and hotels to transfer points too with AMX it's 18 Airlines and three hotels so 21 in total with capital 1 it's 18 Partners total and with Chase 14 in total 11 Airlines and three hotels and Guys these all have their sweet spots and I suggest you do your own research based on what airlines and hotels you like staying with okay the number on its own doesn't really mean that one card is better than the others right just cuz MX has like 21 not necessarily better options than the others all right let's finally look at welcome bonuses now on the AMX Platinum the current welcome bonus is 80,000 points for spending $8,000 in 6 months on the Venture X is 75,000 M for spending $44,000 in 3 months and on the sapphire Reserve it's 60,000 points for spending $4,000 in 3 months with the bonuses the AMX one is not really like a set bonus you can normally find higher targeted offers for 100,000 or more by using incognito mode on your browser or a referral link on the website resi.com which is a dining website owned by American Express there is still a 100,000 Point offer that also gives you 10 points per dollar on restaurants up to $225,000 in spending in your first 6 months so yeah with the Platinum there are a lot of options to find a bonus better than the public offer with the other two not so much all right let's try and come to some conclusions the AMX Platinum is the most comprehensive in number and variety of benefits it also has the best welcome bonus but it has the highest annual feet I recommend this for someone who knows that they will be doing a lot of traveling if you get the card and only do like one trip a year the AMX Platinum might be a waste the Venture X on the other hand provides the best value the annual fee is only a little over half that of the platinum and the travel credit is really easy to use but it provides really good lounge access and authorized user cards are free and they get into all the lounges too so you can really consider that and then since it earns 2x on everything it's a great catch all card I recommend this card for newcomers to tier 4 who are just sort of getting their feet wet they don't want too much of a commitment or for those looking for Simplicity the fees are low and the card is easy to understand the sapphire Reserve has the lowest bonus and probably the worst lounge access although the sappire lounges do look interesting and should be compe once there are more of them but with the sapphire reserve the extra 50% in value for points through the travel portal is where a lot of the advantages with this card come from for booking economy class flights you get great value with that so I recommend this for someone who is committed to the chase ecosystem and who wants to book flights through the travel portal but really guys you can make up your own mind based on all the information provided this is probably the most comprehensive video comparison of these three cards on the internet I dare someone to do a more comprehensive one so thanks for watching guys and don't forget to get a free month of Max rewards gold with my link below you can also find links to all the cards we mentioned in the description below as well please subscribe if you're new and we'll see you next time bye-bye