Frequent Miler on the Air - A second look at the new Chase Sapphire Reserve® card | Coffee Break Ep75 | 10-28-25

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Back in June, Chase introduced the new Chase Sapphire Reserve® card with a higher annual fee. Our initial reactions were mixed and a little disappointed because the card was no longer a no-brainer, broadly applicable card in our view. Now that we've had some time, has our opinion changed?(01:53) - High-level view of the card updates(04:15) - Initially, Greg felt like this card would work for him, but not for the casual cardholder. Does he still feel that way?(10:53) - How does Nick feel about it?Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilar's Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. On today's coffee break, we're going to take a second look at the new Chase-Saphire Reserve Card. As you'll remember, back in June, Chase introduced the new higher fee. It's now $795 Saffire Reserve Card, and our initial reactions were mixed, muted. We were very disappointed about some things.

For example, the card used to be a great, like, no-brainer to recommend to travelers card because it had a very simple structure for if you pay for any travel you used to earn three points per dollar so it was very rewarding for travel it had and still has best in class travel protections but it also had and this is gone now the ability to redeem points for 1.5 cents each for any travel book through chase travel now some people who had the card before still get that grandfathered in for a while, but my point is going forward, that's ultimately gone. And in exchange, you get the ability under certain circumstances to get even more value per point and also to earn more than 3x per point, but it's not everywhere, not all travel.

And then in exchange for the much higher annual fee, they added a bunch of coupons. So they made it like, here's a whole bunch of things you get back, but it's, it's kind of a complicated mess. So, Nick, maybe you can just quickly go through what the new card looks like, what are these coupons and everything at a very high level. And then we'll discuss, has our opinion of all this changed at all? What are we thinking right now? Yeah, so like you said, the annual fee has increased to $795.

You now earn eight points per dollar on all Chase travel purchases, whereas it used to be a split think between hotels and flights. Now it's just 8x on all chase travel, whether you're booking a rental car or flight or whatever. 4x on flights and hotels booked directly with the providers. So that's a slight increase from what it used to be at 3X on all travel. It's 4x now, again, on flights and hotels booked directly with an airline or hotel company. Still 3x on dining, but no 3x on the other travel. You still have priority pass, still have Sapphire Lounge access, global entry TSA pre-check. You still get all of the various coupons, including the $300 annual travel credit, but they've added some more stuff now.

So now we also have Free Apple TV Plus and Free Apple Music, at least through June 22nd of 2027. You get a twice annual $250 credit for the Edit Hotel Bookings. Now, for this year, 2025, you get one of those, and then in 2026, you'll get two. And they went away from originally, they had announced that as being a January to June and July to December thing. But now it's just two. So you could use both of them in January if you wanted to for 2026. You also get a $150 Sapphire Reserve exclusive tables credit twice a year, once January through June and once July through December. A $150 Stubh credit, same calendar idea, once January to June and once July to December. And then there's some DoorDash and Lift benefits that are pretty minor.

and probably not worth getting too far into. And if you spend $75,000 on the card in a calendar year, you get a few additional options or benefits here. You get IHG1 rewards, Diamond Elite status, Southwest A-Lis status, a $500 Southwest Airlines credit when you book Southwest through Chase Travel and a $250 credit for the shops at Chase. So, you know, you get a little bit of a bump if you spend a lot of money on the card. yeah yeah so what do you think yeah so you know right so my my initial reactions a while ago was that

this is probably all good for me but not necessarily for the casual card holder because there's work involved in making sure you you take advantage of all this stuff if you can take advantage of all this stuff or even a lot of this stuff the card can be a winner and i still i still think that um but some of the things that i thought before my opinion has changed a little bit um so just to uh you know go over a few different things here um points boost i'm i'm still uh excited about it for me i think we we talked about that like this gives you the chance for some flights and some hotel bookings to get as much as two cents per point value and that's where i'm a spender a buyer I don't know how to say it, but that's where I'm willing to use my chase points.

I'd happily use my chase points to get two cents per point value, especially when it means, like, when you're booking flights, it registers as a paid flight. So you'll earn airline miles and everything. And with hotels, at least book through the edit, if it's a chain hotel, you should also earn hotel points from that. And so where it's based on the cash rate, you're getting good value for your pay. points and you're earning points with a hotel or airline. So that's really cool. So I'm still, I guess, bullish on that. I don't like that it's, you know, it's unpredictable where you're going to find those points boosts, at least as far as airline, you know, flights go. But I love that it's possible to find them. Free Apple TV. I always like that perk, but I enabled it yesterday.

and I became even more excited because my wife and son got alerted that as part of, because we're already part of a family share thing with Apple, and they got alerted that they now have Apple TV. Maybe they already had it before when we used to pay for Apple TV. I don't know. But the point is it's not just my personal Apple TV that is free. And that's great because lately, I've actually been watching a lot of, lot of Apple TV lately, just coincidentally, with the latest season of slow horses and the

morning show and some other shows that I really enjoy. Seth Rogan's got a couple on there that are really good, I think. So that's been great. That Apple TV recently, I think, increased their price to something like $12.95 a month, so it's saving me that flat out. Apple Music, I'm just trying out now. I didn't know whether I would use it or not when this came out. I've been a subscriber to Spotify for not very long, but about a year and a half or so. And what I did yesterday was I transferred my music and my playlists from Spotify to Apple Music, enabled this free Apple Music subscription, and I'm going to try it out. And I, at least for now, downgraded to the no-fee Spotify plan.

You know, I don't think there's any harm in that because you could always go back to the paid plan if it doesn't work out. So I'm waiting to reserving judgment on that one, whether I'm going to do that long-term or not. But, you know, for the first few minutes, I mean, it seemed fine. I didn't, I don't have anything against Apple Music, so that sounded good. The coupons have turned out, so the things like the $250, the edit credits, the $150 reserve exclusive tables and stuff like that, I haven't come across yet obvious real world uses for those without going out of my way. So for example, I'm actually thinking about doing a weekend in Detroit where,

I just use the edit credits and use the Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables credit to eat out in a nice place. But, you know, I was hoping that it would just sort of, I would just find, you know, places where I'm planning to travel anyway, that these things would be available, and that just hasn't lined up yet. And I've also been a little discouraged sometimes, not always, but sometimes when I go to look up the, edit which is chases hotel platform um that's like fine hotels and resorts uh sometimes the prices seem to be inflated over other booking channels but not always so uh i've been i've been i'm not as bullish on those two uh as i was before um that and then the the big spend benefits i never really planned on spending 75 000 on the card anyway so um so anyway so in summary where I'm at right now is

the small stuff like the Apple stuff seems good. I'm pretty happy with where that's landing. I'm a little I don't know if discourage is the right word, but I'm not as excited as I was

about the hotels and dining coupons. And that's big because that goes a big way in paying back the annual fee if you could use them effectively so we'll say so now all that said i do value the ability i like getting 4x hotels and airlines i don't love that i've lost 3x for all travel but i've earned

you know i'm earning a lot more points now for hotels and and flights that i'm booking directly and and getting best-in-class travel productions when i'm booking that way so uh i'm actually because I'm not booking things like cruises where I, where I'd want the travel protections and at least 3x, I'm actually liking the change personally. I don't like it as a podcast or as a blogger who gives recommendations. It makes it too complicated to say who it would work for. But for me, so far it's working well. How about you?

Yeah, I mean, I think that we can both agree that it's just not an easily recommendable card. the crowd of people for whom I would recommend this is really narrow, significantly more narrow than it was before. And even that doesn't probably narrow it down enough. You have to be super into maximizing everything, I think, to be interested in this card long term still. And my opinion on that has not changed at all. I'm less excited about the 4x flights and hotels than Greg is maybe, because I just don't, I don't book that many cash flights and hotels. So the extra point per dollar in those instances is going to be not even a rounding error at the end of

the year for me probably most years. So I'm not wildly excited about that. Apple TV and Apple Music I was never particularly interested in and I'm still not. I don't use Apple TV. I don't honestly I don't watch much that I can't just watch on YouTube or something. So for free. So I don't watch many shows or anything. So that's not really big for me. I used to years ago, but I just don't anymore. And I use Spotify, and I'm not particularly interested in A, moving everything over because I already have all the playlists and channels and things that I like. And I find it good at recommending music for me. I enjoy Spotify. And I have a family plan. And it's integrated with my Google Home and the Apple TV, or Apple Music, rather, won't, I don't think it integrates at all with Google Home. I don't think, correct me if

I'm wrong out there, somebody knows. And the fact that it doesn't work as a family plan thing is like a deal killer for me because yeah you know we we share that so and I want that and you and it's odd that you can't use the like however much it costs for an individual subscription I think it's like $11 a month toward the cost of the family plan and then buy up for five or six bucks I mean if that were the case even though I don't want to do it my wife might push hard enough and be like come on rather than spend 20 bucks a month let's just make the switch over but but it's too much of a pain as it is so Yeah. And let me clarify that. So Apple TV and Apple Music work differently here. Apple TV automatically works with your family settings. If you've set up your Apple account, this is nothing to do with Apple TV. Your Apple account to be like a family as part of a family unit, I forget what they call it, then Apple TV is automatically shared. Apple Music's very different. Apple Music, when you enable this benefit, you're just getting free Apple Music, for one person.

And as Nick said, at least currently, there's no way to buy up from there to the family plan, which is the Apple Music family plan, which is a specific paid subscription, has nothing to do with the Apple family thing. Right, and it feels weird to me that you can't do that because I feel like the majority of people paying $800 a year for a credit card

probably have at least a partner and very likely a family and a couple of people that you're looking to share music with, I would think. So, of course, it's not going to apply to everybody, but I would imagine that there would be enough people that would want that. I'm surprised that there's no way to do that. Travel credits remain easy. The travel credit, the $300 travel credit, of course, remains easy to use.

We always use that very quickly. The edit credit, I am less excited about this than I was before also. And for me, it's because I figured that living a reasonable distance from New York City. I go to New York City a few times a year. And when this first launched, I looked and I saw some great prices on different hotels in New York City where I might use it. But my goodness, the rates of New York City hotels have climbed so much this year that I don't imagine myself booking a cash rate, certainly not at any of the places in the luxury hotel booking platforms anytime soon. $250 just isn't going to put a dent in places.

where it was actually making up a significant chunk before. So I'm less confident that I'm going to find a use for that. And also, as a blogger, somebody writes about these things and has a bunch of cards with these hotel credits. I'm now looking at FHR credits I have to use and city credits I have to use. And there's enough of those and this. It's just it's hard to book it all out and plan it all out. So I'm less excited about it right now.

I think probably a lot of people will find value in this. I wish that there were a Max FHR equivalent for the edit hotels because Max FHR is a great tool for finding fine hotels and resorts properties, and I found that really useful for just getting an idea of where there are places in my price range. And that opens up a lot of possibilities, whereas the edit, it's kind of a pain because I really have to have places in mind and search a million different places to try to find a place to use it. And it's funny because it's not like Amex that offers Max FHR.

it just there exists a tool to make that easy and there doesn't yet exist such a tool for the edit. So right, right. I'm less, less excited about that. The Sapphire Reserve tables, I'm going to use the $150 credit. I plan to. I'm going to have a night in New York City before the end of the year. And so I plan to use it. But like you said, I'm going to still have to go out of my, even though I'm going to be in New York, I'm still going to have to go out of my way because the place that will go is not near the hotel. And it's, so it's kind of a pain, you know, it's, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, Yeah. I remain not particularly happy with that. Now, if I lived in New York City, I think that that would probably be easier for me to use. Sure. But we don't all live in New York City. So I'm going to use it, but I'm not, I was never wildly excited about it. The stub hub credit, I was pretty sure I would use. I was also pretty sure that even if I wasn't sure I could use it, that I would be able to like, you know, get a credit that I could use in the future by buying a gift card or something. But apparently that's not working. So now I have to find a use for it. Now, my caveat going back to

the edit is that I did see January prices in New York are, as you might expect, pretty reasonable. And there happens to be a show, a short-term show coming out on Broadway that I'm interested in seeing. And so maybe if we can work out a family member to watch the kids, maybe I'll plan a January trip to New York to use the edit credit and use the Stubhubbub credit. on, you know, towards tickets, especially if I, I haven't even checked this, but if I can find a way to use the city strata elite live nation credit and the stub hub hub credit from the Sapphire Reserve to get tickets to the same thing, then, then maybe that'll, that'll increase. Somehow get seats together. Right, right. A lot of ifs and that. That's a huge list of ifs. So, yeah, I mean, I was never wildly

excited about it and I find myself a little bit less excited because I found, particularly because I found the edit credits more difficult to use than I might have anticipated. And part of that is that I already had a lot of travel booked out for this year. So maybe it'll be easier for me next year. Sure. Sure. So it sounds like we have similar thoughts in a lot of ways about all this. And it also looks like we've probably gone over our 20 minutes and are going to have to

refund everybody's money. So, uh, all right, everybody knows where to file the refund form. And, uh, we'll, we'll, we'll pay you back as soon as we can. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequent myelor.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travelin'10 podcast.

Together, myself and my co-host, Tim Johnson, have traveled to over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favorite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travelin'10. Join us at voyescape.com. I'm Pauline Fromer. I've spent most of my life writing, talking, and thinking about travel. Not just where to go, but how to go in a way that's meaningful. On the Frommers Travel Show, we explore the trends, people, and ideas shaping how we see the world.

If you care about the why, as much as the where, I hope you'll join me. You can find new episodes weekly at voyescape.com. Thank you.