What I actually learned about my family after trying 5 DNA ancestry tests

ScienceNews.org, a respectable magazine, lays out the personal experience of its writer Tina Hesman Saey in finding clues about its family’s history through home genetic testing with 5 different companies. The companies that were used for that are Living DNA, Family Tree DNA, 23andMe and AncestryDNA.

Reportedly, results have all arrived within several weeks, but there was a great deal of variation in terms of user experience and the actual results that were yielded.

National Geographic Geno 2.0 has yielded some results relating to the deep past of the author, claiming there is a family ties with several famous figures which is hard to prove or disprove, but provided no useful results in regards to the past 500 of the family. No relatives were matches in the database.

Living DNA was very specific in regards to the author’s British roots, showing supposedly the region in which her ancestors came from. No relatives were discovered.

23andMe did a good job giving a detailed ancestry report, although the author doubts the accuracy of results, some of them did make a lot of sense to her. She also mentioned how well these results were explained – linking between physical traits to specific genes. No relatives were found and it was difficult to delve further into the family tree, though.

AncestryDNA combines a traditional genealogical records with DNA making it the most apt to create family trees, but the furthest in family it could reach was based on the inputs the writer has inserted into the software.

Overall, she says, the last 2 DNA home kits she used were fun to use and helped her develop the hobby of genealogy research, but nothing is quite “there”.

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/family-dna-ancestry-tests-review-comparison