My Review/Opinion of 23 and me and Ancestry DNA!

Having done both a 23 and Me and Ancestry DNA kit I wanted to post a bit of a mini review, sorry for the lack of pictures I didnt want to share personal information.

When i took my ancestry dna test I was able to score a kit for $49.99 this was a while ago and at the time I thought what the heck, I had a pretty good idea about my moms side of the family but knew next to nothing about my dads side of the family and that was what motivated me to order the kit.

I placed an order got my kit maybe 3 days after ordering it and excitedly opened it and sent in my sample. I got my Results exactly 14 days on the dot later. Which I call fast service, I was satisfied with the results at the time although a bit disappointed that the results were as broad as they were. Ancestry puts different Dna breakdowns into overly broad categories. You might be wondering what I mean by this well let me go into brief detail about it, Ancestry if you have for example German or French Dna puts it down as Just Europe West, the problem with this is that you do not get told how much of it is French and How much of it is German, Which frustrated me to no end, Luckily that is pretty much the only complaint that I have with ancestry.

Ancestry Has a awesome Database of records, I have been able to find records of family members all the way back to the year 800 on Ancestry, I wouldnt have been able to get so far with any other service, Ancestry has extensive databases of military records, birth records, death records, Social Security records, Census records and even records of immigration, you can find almost anything, heck I was even able to find records of my parents getting married. It is really easy to search the database, all you need is the name of the person, roughly when they were born or when they died and what nationality they are and thats all, chances are that you will find something as I have yet to run into a situation where I wasnt able to. I even found out that my great grandfather on my dads mothers side had siblings and that all of them except for great grandpa and his sister died in ww2, I thought it was really cool and started to research the battles that they were in. Another Great bit of information is that my 3rd great grandfather on my dads fathers side, had just finished medical school, and the civil war was starting so he enlisted in the confederate army as a doctor, and survived the war, he went on to give loads of money to poor people, and was generally a overall nice guy, he even died while treating a patient! I couldnt believe that records like that existed.

Ancestry also has this great system that shows migration patterns typical of people who share similar dna to yourself, you can see where your family would have came from and where they would have entered the United States From, I belong to the Eastern Kentucky and Northern Tennessee settlers group. Which is awesome. And a story that had been running in my family that I had a portugese Grandmother, I forget how many greats was proven with this system, and that they did end up in the US after the Great 1755 Lisbon quake.

Ancestry also has a great system for connecting you with relatives, ive met very close matches on ancestry that ended up being close family members that I was not even aware existed. Its been fairly accurate although sometimes it does get the exact relationship wrong, but it is never wrong with if someone is related. You can see how many specific Dna segments that you share with the person and the larger the number the closer the relationship generally.

I really like ancestry, but as mentioned the biggest downside is how overly broad the genetic categories are, it wont telll you a specific country for most of europe except for Great Britain and Ireland.

Now on to 23 and Me, I took 23 and Me when I first learned about it because I was not satisfied with the overly broad categories on ancestry, I am not mad at ancestry and for the money it was still a excellent kit. 23 and Me offered a much more indepth break down of my dna and I was able to see how much Germany and French and whatnot that I had, I honestly would say that if you are going for genetic breakdown 23 and Me is 1000X better than ancestry, but if you ware most interested in researching family history, then ancestry wins hands down and 23 and me doesnt even have a database or place to research, they do on the other hand also connect you with dna matches and will show you exactly side by side a dna comparison between your dna and your matches. 23 and Me also has a fantastic bit of health risk reports if you pay the $150 In my opinion its totally worth it, 23 and Me will test your dna for specific markers that have been connected with genetic conditions or diseases, and tell you if you are at risk for getting them, have them or could pass on a disease or defect to your child, 23 and Me tests all of the mainstream rare diseases. And can tell you if you are lactose intolerant etc. 23 and Me can also tell you your risk level for a small variety of diseases such as parkinsons, age related macular degeneration ,Alzheimers, Celiac disease etc.

23 and Me also has a cool genetic traits bit bundled that offers indepth details about your physical characteristics and how they compare to other people with similar dna from the same region. While in my opinion this really isnt that necessary it was and is extremely cool and fun to play around with and read.

Overall I think both tests are worth it for the price, but they are both quite different and your goals should decide which one you take, if you want to research go with ancestry you will have a much better experience if you only care about dna then go with 23 and me, you will get a much better genetic profile than with ancestry.

Feel free to ask any questions I will do my best to answer each and every one of them!

And if you liked this Post, then you can contribute and buy me a beer!

Thanks