It depends who you fly with. If you fly with one of their transfer partners then I occasionally find good value in topping off my account to get an award ticket. I do this with United. I also stay at Hyatts so also occasionally use my points for these transfers. However, those award redemptions are few and far between. In general, if starting from scratch I find the travel portal is the most solidly consistent redemption option. That is one of the reasons I like the CSR so much. There is a very valuable floor for redemptions so I always feel like I get consistent value.