I signed up for 23andMe based on recommendations and tables of comparison surrounding or on the ISOGG webpage. 23andMe was billed as the consumer grade medical test whereas FamilyTreeDNA and Ancestry.com were billed as ancestry or genealogical services almost exclusively.
Unfortunately, I didn't see the discussion about the v3 vs v4 chip at 23andMe, and I hadn't seen all the issues with compatibility of my data with others or the significant reduction in the number of autosomal SNPs to compare with other FTDNA, Ancestry, or similar testing services.
I have now gone through and examined all the 23andMe reports, and I have reached out to make connections with my newly discovered DNA relatives. And I have to say, "I am not impressed."
The 23andMe medical analysis and data is less than what you would get from talking to a technician at a public clinic. For one thing, I wanted to know my blood type which is a simple thing to derive from a genetic test of the kind that the genetic genealogy community commonly uses. 23andMe had this ability at some point, but they pulled it. Presumably because of the restrictions imposed by the FDA or by litigious users or by litigious saboteurs for hire. In any case, it isn't included in their reports.
You can do some hand comparisons of your DNA on Stanford's project Interpretome. For 5$, you can get Promethease to gather up a digital report for you. But these things aren't integrated with 23andMe and are largely inaccessible to your average user.
So I started looking at alternatives, and I have to say I am relatively impressed with WeGene. It is a Chinese company based in Shenzen, and I was happy to see my blood type on my home page. It has a strong focus on athleticism and health indications. The interface is almost exclusively in Chinese at this point, but this can be adapted to rather easily by using Google Translate and Wikipedia. Most of the interface can be mapped and read this way, and the interface is pretty simply designed.
If you're up to the risk of putting your DNA results in the hands of a Chinese corporation then I recommend checking it out. Though you may want to check your privacy settings prior to uploading because they're all set to "Everybody can see" by default. Also depending on your notification preferences, you should check and change those because you are setup to potentially get a lot of notifications via their site or by email by default though nothing that seems to be the US typical spam consent form.
What are some alternative to 23andMe, Ancestry.com, and FTDNA that you would recommend checking out?
