Chase Sapphire Preferred® vs. the Hello Kitty® Visa® Platinum Reward Card®: Which is better?

Welcome back to Chase Sapphire Preferred week! One of the best things about being a blogger is the interaction with people from all over the world. I publish a post from my living room and a few minutes later I’m getting responses over email, Twitter, and in the comments section. And there’s one topic that keeps coming up over and over again.

“Great post!” says the typical reader. “But I think you’re avoiding the larger issue. And by that I mean, which card is better: the Chase Sapphire Preferred® or the the Hello Kitty^® Visa^® Platinum Reward Card^®?

I’ve avoided this question long enough. I know I’ll probably ruffle a lot of feathers when I finally make my pronouncement as to which card is superior, but that’s okay. Extremely important bloggers like me are used to that sort of thing, so let’s get down to business.

REWARDS: The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is the gold standard of flexible rewards points. You can redeem points for a wide variety of travel purchases: flights, hotels, even train trips! Also, there are rumors that one can earn extra points at restaurants on certain Fridays, though details on that particular deal are hard to come by.

The Hello Kitty card, on the other hand, lets you accumulate points which can be exchanged for merchandise from sanrio.com. For example, you could buy this Hello Kitty calculator:

…which you can then use to calculate how many more Hello Kitty points you’re going to earn with your Hello Kitty^® Visa^® Platinum Reward Card^®.

ADVANTAGE: I’m going to call this one a toss-up.

DESIGN: The Hello Kitty card is TOTALLY cute!!!! How many other credit cards feature the color pink? I’m not even going to look at the Chase Sapphire Preferred® since there’s no way they can compete with Hello Kitty in this area. I’m pretty sure the color pink is nowhere to be found on that thing.

ADVANTAGE: Hello Kitty.

WEIGHT: The Chase Sapphire Preferred® weighs more than the Hello Kitty card. Those of you who follow sports know that weight is a factor in head-to-head matchups, so I have to give the nod to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® here.

Advantage: CSP.

INTANGIBLES: A recent study ranking the top 10 Chase Sapphire Preferred® cards found that the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card accounted for an incredible 6 of the top 10 Chase Sapphire Preferred® credit cards. The Hello Kitty card had exactly 0 entries on that same list. I think we know who wins this one.

Advantage: CSP.

THE VERDICT: The Hello Kitty card put up a good fight, but deep down you knew that the CSP would prevail, didn’t you? Congratulations to the wonderful folks at Chase for another credit card victory!