CapitalOne Venture X Credit Card Review: One Year Later

One year ago, we were on our first visit back to Kansas City after moving to Spain. And then our HVAC system broke.

After getting a few quotes for replacement, we decided we’d make the best of a bad situation and open a new credit card. We’d been considering the CapitalOne Venture X for a while, and spending $10,088 on the new HVAC would allow us to instantly achieve the opening bonus of 75,000 miles. So we took the plunge.

Now, one year later, the CapitalOne Venture X card has become our main credit card for all of our joint finances. But is it worth the $395 annual fee? Keep reading for my verdict.

About the CapitalOne Venture X credit card

I would say that the CapitalOne Venture X card is approaching “luxury” credit card territory, so this was new for both of us. But we decided to open the card only in my name, with Matt as an authorized user, which helped us essentially split the cost between the two of us.

Here’s are the basics of the Venture X card:

• $395 annual fee
• $300 annual travel credit
• $100 credit for TSA PreCheck/Global Entry
• 75,000 miles (equivalent to $750) opening bonus if you spend $4,000 in the first three months
• 10,000 miles anniversary bonus
• No foreign transaction fees
• Priority Pass & CapitalOne Lounge access
• Hertz President’s Circle status
• Rental car insurance
• Cell phone protection
• Double miles on all purchases

We have personally taken advantage of most of these features, minus a few. Neither of us have needed to renew our TSA PreCheck/Global Entry yet, but that will probably be on the list for next year. Nothing bad has happened to my phone, so we haven’t had to try out the cell phone protection. We haven’t rented a car with Hertz, but we did rent one in Wales a few months ago and loved knowing that we were insured! And we are still waiting on the 10,000-mile anniversary bonus. 🙂

However, there are two aspects of the CapitalOne VentureX card that we have considered to be major wins over the past year: having Priority Pass & CapitalOne lounge access, and alllllll the miles.

The Joys of Priority Pass & CapitalOne Lounges

In the past year, we’ve taken 32 flights — including three and a half round-trips to the U.S. That amounts to a lot of time in airports, sitting and waiting and being hungry. But with access to lounges in most of the airports we’ve visited, it’s been a total game changer.

After getting the credit card while visiting Kansas City, our first trip was back to Spain, with a layover in Dallas. And it turns out that Dallas is home to one of only three very special CapitalOne lounges in the whole country. (The others are in Denver & D.C.) As someone who previously got to visit airport lounges on occasion, through my old work credit card, the Dallas CapitalOne lounge was hands-down the best I’d ever been in.

Between the hot food, delicious desserts, premade sandwiches that are perfect to take on the go, and the cold brew on tap (!), you definitely won’t go hungry. Oh, there’s also (allegedly) a yoga room and showers. I felt like an impostor being in a lounge that nice. 😂 But we have specifically booked layovers through Dallas on our last two trips back to the Europe as well, just to make sure we have time to get into the lounge!

Besides that, we’ve also made use of our Priority Pass membership, which gets us access to a network of 1,700+ lounges worldwide. So far, we’ve made 18 visits to 10 different Priority Pass lounges. (I love how the app lets you track all your visits, because I am a little travel-tracking freak.) Not every lounge is as nice as the CapitalOne lounge, but you’ll usually always get some food and at least somewhere more relaxing to pass the time during your layover.

One thing that surprised us is that Matt and I each have our own Priority Pass membership card, even though he’s only an authorized user on the account. And we each are allowed to bring two guests with us into the lounge for free!

Update June 4, 2025: Literally a week after writing this article, I got an email from CapitalOne stating that authorized users will NO LONGER have their own Priority Pass/CapitalOne lounge access, nor are any free guests allowed — starting February 1, 2026. The stated reason is that the lounges are getting too full. You know, I feel like they could have just removed the two-free-guests thing and cut the total number of allowed people into the lounge (in our case) from six to two… so I’m kind of annoyed. We still have the option to pay $125 annually for Matt to have unlimited lounge access, which we will probably do.

Now that we’ve tasted lounge access, I’m not sure I can go back to not having it — at least not with how much we’re traveling currently. However, since we’ve only been in the U.S. and Europe this past year, I haven’t had the chance yet to see what the options are like in Asia. But I will soon! And that brings me to my next favorite thing about the CapitalOne Venture X card…

CapitalOne Venture X Miles Can Take You Far

After banking the 75,000 opening bonus miles, the 20,176 miles we got from buying the HVAC system (double points on everything, remember), and all of our other joint purchases for about six months… we had 125,000 miles. And it was “Travel Tuesday,” which is the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving when air travel is supposedly cheaper. And it was time to start thinking about booking our flights to East Asia for our honeymoon in August of this year. So I decided to see just how far my CapitalOne miles could take me.

My first step was to see which airlines offered flights between Madrid and Tokyo or Seoul, and then figuring out which of those airlines were points transfer partners with CapitalOne. Eventually, I found super reasonable round-trip flights on points from Madrid to Tokyo with a layover in Paris. And it would only cost about 56,000 Air France/FlyingBlue points per person! It didn’t even have a ton of stops or crazy long layovers. I wasn’t sure whether the deal would last, so I needed to transfer my CapitalOne miles to FlyingBlue points, quick.

Luckily, it was extremely quick and easy to do the points conversion. The CapitalOne miles were a 1:1 transfer to FlyingBlue points, and after I initiated the transfer, the points were in my FlyingBlue account within a matter of minutes.

Which means I was able to book two round-trip flights from Madrid to Tokyo for 112,000 points. (Though we did have to pay $254 each in taxes and fees — which are not possible to cover with points.)

I was ecstatic to have been able to use our CapitalOne miles so efficiently! While I’ve been pretty loyal to American Airlines in the past, for all my international trips, I’ve never once had enough points to cover part of a one-way trip from the U.S. to Europe, for example. It feels amazing to know that the CapitalOne miles are actually redeemable and can help us travel for cheap in the future!

Final Thoughts: CapitalOne VentureX Credit Card Review

For Matt and I just being two “regular” people — not luxury travelers, not professional credit card point hackers — the CapitalOne VentureX helps us feel like we’re actually getting our money’s worth from our travel credit card. Between the Priority Pass and CapitalOne lounge access and the redemption value of miles, this is the credit card I’m recommending to all my travel-loving friends. All the other things are just added bonuses.

If you’re considering opening the CapitalOne Venture X card, I’d love if you’d use my referral link! And always remember to be smart with your credit card usage. 😉

 

Would you ever open the CapitalOne Venture X? What are your favorite travel credit cards? Let me know in the comments!

-Cathy

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