Probably the best value is the air/hotel packages. For 235K points you get 120K miles in a host of different airline programs and a 7 night stay in a cat 1-5 hotel. You don't have to use both at the same time/trip.

you can use the miles anyway you want: free flight, upgrades, etc.

The hotel portion can be "upgraded" later to a cat 6 or 7 if you decide to stay at one of thoese (15K more points for cat 6 and 35K more points for Cat 7).

The hotel certificate is good for a year, can be transferred to someone else (makes a great wedding gift) and can be extended for a year (or more).

You can even redeposit the hotel portion, although you only get 45K miles for it. Better than nothing if you don't use.

This is the only award I ever request, and I've been through 10 million point so far (of course, I used a lot of those points on even better awards that were available in the past...)

Using the points this way - I value marriott reward points at least 1.5 cents per point and sometimes 2 cents or more.

Billy