Customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
6,195 customer ratings
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AncestryDNA: Genetic Ethnicity Test
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Customer reviews
- AncestryDNA: Genetic Ethnicity Test
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- Customer reviews
Top positive review
some advantages over other testing companies
November 13, 2017
I've done DNA testing with all of the major companies now. And I've been at this DNA stuff for almost 15 years now.
* I found the ethnicity estimate to be just about equal to everyone else. You can get more detail running your own models via gedmatch but for the curious or beginner, this is the easy result. If you just want to know whether you need a kilt or lederhosen or green beer for the next holiday seasons then this works as well, with many particular limitations, as any of the others.
* There's no medical interpretation - most don't anymore. You can get good medical results running your raw download through Promethease for a few bucks. If you want to know medical propensities then Ancestry won't help much on its own.
* The relationship calculations are pretty accurate and the database is huge. Compared to my other tests, this one returned far more and much closer connections. If you're looking for birth parents and such, this is the place to start. Just remember that the calculator is an estimate and other possibilities exist.
- The sampling process was simple "spit in a tube, mail it in" - I much prefer cheek swabs but this gets the job done.
- Time was super fast for me - 4 weeks from mail-in. I have a test out with one company that is nearing 3 months to process.
- The user interface is pretty simple for newbies but doesn't offer much in the way of analysis tools for those who have DNA experience. Gedmatch can makeup for the shortfall in analysis tools if you can get your matches to upload there.
- The ease of creating an attached tree makes for some particularly easy genealogical research to confirm/refute family connections.
- The ease of creating an attached tree makes for some particularly prevalent errors in family trees.
- yDNA and mtDNA predictive markers are hidden in these results if you want to make an effort to dig them out.
- The marketing of this tester has created a large database of folks who were only interested in ethnicity and admixture estimates who have no interest in and won't reply to genealogy queries. Many haven't logged back in since they got their results back.
There seem to be a lot of customers who forgot that molecular biology, human origins and migrations geography, and world history weren't their best subjects in school and were expecting this to return an easy result to "grasp it all" in a few minutes. The more you want to dig, the more complex the understanding will become. "DNA for Dummies" is a master's degree - "All You Ever Wanted to Know..." is a PhD. If you get hung up on needing to understand it all in a few short hours then you're going to get very frustrated. Take it in a little at a time.
Having spent many $1000's on this hobby over the years, I'm very pleased with this $70 investment into understanding who I am and where I came from. Your mileage may vary.
* I found the ethnicity estimate to be just about equal to everyone else. You can get more detail running your own models via gedmatch but for the curious or beginner, this is the easy result. If you just want to know whether you need a kilt or lederhosen or green beer for the next holiday seasons then this works as well, with many particular limitations, as any of the others.
* There's no medical interpretation - most don't anymore. You can get good medical results running your raw download through Promethease for a few bucks. If you want to know medical propensities then Ancestry won't help much on its own.
* The relationship calculations are pretty accurate and the database is huge. Compared to my other tests, this one returned far more and much closer connections. If you're looking for birth parents and such, this is the place to start. Just remember that the calculator is an estimate and other possibilities exist.
- The sampling process was simple "spit in a tube, mail it in" - I much prefer cheek swabs but this gets the job done.
- Time was super fast for me - 4 weeks from mail-in. I have a test out with one company that is nearing 3 months to process.
- The user interface is pretty simple for newbies but doesn't offer much in the way of analysis tools for those who have DNA experience. Gedmatch can makeup for the shortfall in analysis tools if you can get your matches to upload there.
- The ease of creating an attached tree makes for some particularly easy genealogical research to confirm/refute family connections.
- The ease of creating an attached tree makes for some particularly prevalent errors in family trees.
- yDNA and mtDNA predictive markers are hidden in these results if you want to make an effort to dig them out.
- The marketing of this tester has created a large database of folks who were only interested in ethnicity and admixture estimates who have no interest in and won't reply to genealogy queries. Many haven't logged back in since they got their results back.
There seem to be a lot of customers who forgot that molecular biology, human origins and migrations geography, and world history weren't their best subjects in school and were expecting this to return an easy result to "grasp it all" in a few minutes. The more you want to dig, the more complex the understanding will become. "DNA for Dummies" is a master's degree - "All You Ever Wanted to Know..." is a PhD. If you get hung up on needing to understand it all in a few short hours then you're going to get very frustrated. Take it in a little at a time.
Having spent many $1000's on this hobby over the years, I'm very pleased with this $70 investment into understanding who I am and where I came from. Your mileage may vary.
1,173 people found this helpful
Top critical review
DO NOT PURCHASE THIS IF YOU ARE ASIAN
April 24, 2018
I'm Korean, but I wanted to further understand my ethic background. I was curious if I have South Asian genes or ancestors from other East Asian countries.
But the test result only says I'm "100% Asian." One giant yellow pie chart just saying I'm just "Asian", nothing else. So, I paid 80 bucks to find out I'm Asian.
AncestryDNA only 4 Asian regions (Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Guam/Philippines), whereas they have more than 100 European regions.
Is this some sort of sick joke? I understand that the company may have way fewer Asian samples. But then, they should've notified customers that they can't track Asian people's ancestry at all.
Don't waste your money on this, if you are Asian.
But the test result only says I'm "100% Asian." One giant yellow pie chart just saying I'm just "Asian", nothing else. So, I paid 80 bucks to find out I'm Asian.
AncestryDNA only 4 Asian regions (Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Guam/Philippines), whereas they have more than 100 European regions.
Is this some sort of sick joke? I understand that the company may have way fewer Asian samples. But then, they should've notified customers that they can't track Asian people's ancestry at all.
Don't waste your money on this, if you are Asian.
3,909 people found this helpful
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April 24, 2018
I'm Korean, but I wanted to further understand my ethic background. I was curious if I have South Asian genes or ancestors from other East Asian countries.
But the test result only says I'm "100% Asian." One giant yellow pie chart just saying I'm just "Asian", nothing else. So, I paid 80 bucks to find out I'm Asian.
AncestryDNA only 4 Asian regions (Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Guam/Philippines), whereas they have more than 100 European regions.
Is this some sort of sick joke? I understand that the company may have way fewer Asian samples. But then, they should've notified customers that they can't track Asian people's ancestry at all.
Don't waste your money on this, if you are Asian.
But the test result only says I'm "100% Asian." One giant yellow pie chart just saying I'm just "Asian", nothing else. So, I paid 80 bucks to find out I'm Asian.
AncestryDNA only 4 Asian regions (Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Guam/Philippines), whereas they have more than 100 European regions.
Is this some sort of sick joke? I understand that the company may have way fewer Asian samples. But then, they should've notified customers that they can't track Asian people's ancestry at all.
Don't waste your money on this, if you are Asian.
December 27, 2017
My ancestors were from Korea. One of our daughters submitted her saliva to the 23 and me and discovered that she had Korean, Chinese and Japanese genes which wasn't surprising. Mine from the AncestryDNA, however, declared that I am 100% East Asian with a huge circled region encompassing Siberia to the north, Japan to the east, Indonesia to the south, and Bangladesh to the west. The map is attached. What a waste of money and effort! The Ancestry DNA should have a big warning that their test isn't for East Asians.
November 28, 2017
Ordered two kits for my parents last year; they were so excited to learn their ancestry. They followed the instructions accordingly, and mailed in with the prepaid boxes. A year later, still no results and it's impossible to contact the company. This past August my father passed away and I am beyond furious that we will never know his results. More importantly, my family is so sad that he never had the opportunity to learn his results. He truly looked forward to learning. Total waste of time and money.
August 25, 2017
RIPOFF - after finally getting the email results on this test I purchased for my daughter, I am very disappointed. There is nothing specific except the percentages of her heritage. Then they want you to purchase a membership to see anything else. Also the results are not printable - you can just read it once and you are done. DON"T INVEST IN THIS!!!!! if you really want any information about your genetics. I would give this zero stars if possible. For $79.00 I expected more genetic information, not having to spend up to $199.00 for six months of access to their website. The TV ads are bogus, very misleading. I wish I had read the reviews before ordering this and I would not have wasted my $$$.
May 21, 2017
Be aware that Ancestry.com takes DNA ownership rights from customers and their relatives. Buried in the Terms of Service, Ancestry.com warns customers, “it is possible that information about you or a genetic relative could be revealed, such as that you or a relative are carriers of a particular disease. That information could be used by insurers to deny you insurance coverage, by law enforcement agencies to identify you or your relatives, and in some places, the data could be used by employers to deny employment.”
To use the AncestryDNA service, customers must consent to the Ancestry.com Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. These are binding legal contracts between the customer and Ancestry.com. The most egregious of these terms gives Ancestry.com a free license to exploit your DNA for the rest of time.
Customers must understand that turning over their DNA means a loss of complete ownership and control. Ancestry.com customers should also know they’re giving up the genetic privacy of themselves and their relatives.
Before purchasing, individuals are advised to fully read and consider the Ancestry.com Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If you become a customer, Ancestry.com owns your DNA for life and longer.
To use the AncestryDNA service, customers must consent to the Ancestry.com Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. These are binding legal contracts between the customer and Ancestry.com. The most egregious of these terms gives Ancestry.com a free license to exploit your DNA for the rest of time.
Customers must understand that turning over their DNA means a loss of complete ownership and control. Ancestry.com customers should also know they’re giving up the genetic privacy of themselves and their relatives.
Before purchasing, individuals are advised to fully read and consider the Ancestry.com Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If you become a customer, Ancestry.com owns your DNA for life and longer.
October 4, 2017
We don't really get much time to review all of our Prime purchases on Amazon, but this was worthy of taking a few moments to provide.
We took our time investigating all of the aDNA testing and purchased from Ancestry.com based on the portability of their format to other services as the baseline for more advanced testing. Unfortunately, at this point, we discovered that their format had recently changed and is not compatible with some of the other major services. This was our baseline and we purchased two of these kits from Amazon to save on the extreme dollar amount of Ancestry's shipping price. (Thank you Amazon Prime!)
While the kits went smoothly and everything returned in less than 1 week after reaching the lab, we discovered on trying to transfer our results that the advertised 700,000 SNPs were no longer included. After an additional analysis, we discovered the following out of 5 family member's kits: The difference in the advertised number is NOT 700,000 any longer (this apparently changed this past May from what I understand). You can see by the numbers below that only one kit comes in rounded to 700,000. The last two were purchased through Amazon right before the dates listed and completely unusable for our purposes (not because of Amazon but because Ancestry.com is not being honest with their consumers).
Very disappointed that this is still being advertised as 700,000, when clearly the difference is quite large. This has now come down to having to repurchase the autosomal DNA tests elsewhere and doubled our price for what we should have gotten from their (Ancestry.com)'s known standard.
Whether the last 3 tests on this list were kicked out of the lab without proper quality control, or whether they dumped bad kits on Amazon, is to be determined, but whatever the case, we did not receive the proper amount of raw results, nor properly formatted files or sizes, as they were producing previously.
Reaching a representative at Ancestry who knows how to shift this to the right dept for a repaired analysis of the results, is futile. Very disappointed in Ancestry.com. (PS the kit works great their lab processing however, does not!)
Kits #1-3 were purchased directly from Ancestry.com
Kits #4-5 were purchased here at Smile.Amazon.com
Hopes that help those trying to make a decision on which kit to utilize.
#1 F 690,379SNPs Received results (Before mid -DEC 2016). File size zipped:5.89MB unzipped:17.9
#2 F 460,431SNPs Received results Late July/Early August 2017 File sizes undetermined
#3 M 454,042SNPs Received results 1 week after going to lab 14 SEPT 2017 File size zipped: 5.47 MB unzipped:16.7
#4 M 454,042SNPs Received results 1 week after going to lab 23 SEPT 2017 File size zipped: 5.613MB unzipped:17,184
#5 F 454,042SNPs Received results 1 week after going to lab 15 SEPT 2017 File size zipped: 5.606MB unzipped:17,184
We took our time investigating all of the aDNA testing and purchased from Ancestry.com based on the portability of their format to other services as the baseline for more advanced testing. Unfortunately, at this point, we discovered that their format had recently changed and is not compatible with some of the other major services. This was our baseline and we purchased two of these kits from Amazon to save on the extreme dollar amount of Ancestry's shipping price. (Thank you Amazon Prime!)
While the kits went smoothly and everything returned in less than 1 week after reaching the lab, we discovered on trying to transfer our results that the advertised 700,000 SNPs were no longer included. After an additional analysis, we discovered the following out of 5 family member's kits: The difference in the advertised number is NOT 700,000 any longer (this apparently changed this past May from what I understand). You can see by the numbers below that only one kit comes in rounded to 700,000. The last two were purchased through Amazon right before the dates listed and completely unusable for our purposes (not because of Amazon but because Ancestry.com is not being honest with their consumers).
Very disappointed that this is still being advertised as 700,000, when clearly the difference is quite large. This has now come down to having to repurchase the autosomal DNA tests elsewhere and doubled our price for what we should have gotten from their (Ancestry.com)'s known standard.
Whether the last 3 tests on this list were kicked out of the lab without proper quality control, or whether they dumped bad kits on Amazon, is to be determined, but whatever the case, we did not receive the proper amount of raw results, nor properly formatted files or sizes, as they were producing previously.
Reaching a representative at Ancestry who knows how to shift this to the right dept for a repaired analysis of the results, is futile. Very disappointed in Ancestry.com. (PS the kit works great their lab processing however, does not!)
Kits #1-3 were purchased directly from Ancestry.com
Kits #4-5 were purchased here at Smile.Amazon.com
Hopes that help those trying to make a decision on which kit to utilize.
#1 F 690,379SNPs Received results (Before mid -DEC 2016). File size zipped:5.89MB unzipped:17.9
#2 F 460,431SNPs Received results Late July/Early August 2017 File sizes undetermined
#3 M 454,042SNPs Received results 1 week after going to lab 14 SEPT 2017 File size zipped: 5.47 MB unzipped:16.7
#4 M 454,042SNPs Received results 1 week after going to lab 23 SEPT 2017 File size zipped: 5.613MB unzipped:17,184
#5 F 454,042SNPs Received results 1 week after going to lab 15 SEPT 2017 File size zipped: 5.606MB unzipped:17,184
April 3, 2017
AncestryDNA provides vague, general, limited results. 23andme provides more specific details (mtDNA, yDNA, haplogroups) for the same price ($99). You definitely get more bang for your buck with 23andme.
February 15, 2018
Results for Asian-Americans are trash. Both of my parents are from China so I was hoping to see a finer breakdown of what ethnicities that entailed and if there were any interesting surprises, like Pacific Islands or Mongolia. After paying $50 (bought the test on sale) and waiting over two months for processing (2 weeks longer than my husband, who did the test with me and mailed his in at the same time) I found out that I'm... 95% Asia East (which it defines as Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Palau) and 5% Polynesia (which is "about 120,000 square miles of land spread across some 10 million square miles of water"). Effectively, I paid $50 to learn that I am, in fact, Asian.
Luckily, some Googling led me to WeGene.com, which is a Chinese company that analyzes your AncestryDNA or 23andme data and gives a more detailed analysis of your results. I got my breakdown of Northern vs. Southern Han Chinese as well as some minority groups in Yunnan and < 2% Northeast Asian (Korean and Japanese). AncestryDNA's lack of data on Asian ancestry is shameful - they should just partner with WeGene for their database so we don't have to upload the data ourselves.
Luckily, some Googling led me to WeGene.com, which is a Chinese company that analyzes your AncestryDNA or 23andme data and gives a more detailed analysis of your results. I got my breakdown of Northern vs. Southern Han Chinese as well as some minority groups in Yunnan and < 2% Northeast Asian (Korean and Japanese). AncestryDNA's lack of data on Asian ancestry is shameful - they should just partner with WeGene for their database so we don't have to upload the data ourselves.
April 26, 2018
I do not recommend this product at all. I feel like it is just a gimmick. They are very vague on what countries you are from it said Eastern European and when you click on it it named over 15 different countries. I knew I was eastern european and when it lists every country in eastern europe it kind of defeats the purpose...
July 21, 2018
I got better results for my dog...seriously, with her I was able to track breeds through maternal and paternal lines. With ancestry testing I simply confirmed what I already knew in terms of ethnic roots and then got hit with about a gazillion tons of "up-selling" while navigating the website. There is nothing, I could find, which separated out what came from which parent which seems odd to me. The "migration" is just basic history of how Europeans, in my case, came to the New World. All in all,ho-hum-snore, results. This test is probably useful for anyone trying to locate missing family who may also be registered on the site but for me the results were disappointingly generic, general and vague. Their "migration" is just a hacking up of historical facts, i.e. people left Ireland and came here due to, wait for it, hunger. Really and for this I paid a hundred bucks? I would investigate 23 and Me or some of the other tests available.
