Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAncestry is a good choice if you are going to do no further ...
September 1, 2017
I've done testing with both Ancestry and FTDNA. If you're testing for ethnicity, you probably shouldn't be testing at all. DNA doesn't respect political/national boundaries. There's basically no difference between a German and an Englishmen genetically speaking. For the differences there are, they will be different at different times because of migrations/invasions. Both the Ancestry and FTDNA Family Finder test are autosomal DNA tests which tests chromosomes from both parents. Ancestry is a good choice if you are going to do no further testing. They have the largest DNA database to match upon and their ethnicity calculator comes up with results that most people would expect. FTDNA's recent changes in how they calculate ethnicities has produced strange results because of their reference population choices. You can also download your raw results and import them into FTDNA but Ancestry doesn't allow the opposite.
The reason to test with FTDNA is their additional testing products. If you're a male tester, you can do additional Y-DNA testing which only tests the Y-chromosome. This allows the test to reach much further back in time; autosomal testing is only good for about 4-5 generations. FTDNA also keeps your sample for 25 years so it's available for additional testing even if the original test taker isn't. So if you're considering doing any additional DNA testing, FTDNA is your best choice. Ancestry only has the autosomal test. FTDNA's test doesn't require any subscription fees on their site to access other member's trees like Ancestry does. They also have a Chromosome browser to check DNA matches -- Ancestry does not . FTDNA is much more about DNA testing; Ancestry is about their genealogy records. Both will come back with accurate DNA results - ie the raw DNA file. The ethnicity results for both should be looked at with extreme skepticism -- the testing is more suited for determining ancestral matches.
