Has anyone else used Living DNA

Question

In the past I have done the Family Tree DNA with the 111 marker Y-DNA ( super helpful) and the Ancestry DNA test. (Ho-hum)... Both somewhat supported the hard paper research that we have made over the decades.  Although Ancestry changed the ethic profile program about a year ago.

I heard about Living DNA being a UK based program, so I decided to give it a shot.  My new DNA ancestry report from them is fairly interesting.  They break it down into COUNTY AREAs  within Great Britain.    Supposedly they will soon be able to break down smaller areas within Ireland.

I already know the original location of many of my Ancestors and it would seem that the Living DNA regional map seems to be fairly accurate.  

They have a family link, family tree area that is a new feature and they admit that they do not have much information yet since they are a fairly new company.

Plus their home page and portal system is either not working correctly or it takes a computer science PHd to figure it out...

In my case I hoping to link up with Clark DNA cousins who are still in the British Isles, or those who left after my ancestors.  Since nobody has been able to really prove where my line of Clarks originated before late 1600s Virginia.

Answer 1

I have LivingDNA. I found it useful to locate the regions of England my ancestors came from.  However, they have such a small database it has been disappointing with cousin matches and the Family Tree area.  I honestly don't use LivingDNA much at all.  I will be signing up with 23andMe in the next two weeks since their database of users is much larger, probably second to Ancestry.  I also have Clark (Clarke) in my family tree but they are from Maryland.

Comments

James, if you haven't already, be sure to upload your Ancestry DNA to MyHeritage. They have a larger database than 23andMe and a good many of the testers live in the UK.

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Thank you Bennet for mentioning this. I overlooked MyHeritage. I assume I don't need to pay to upload my DNA to MyHeritage?

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Yes, free to upload and do matching. I believe you would need to subscribe if you want to make a tree there.

Answer 2

I can second the comment from James that they do a good job of locating regions within the U.K and also that their matching capability is useless (they only started matching a year ago but it is not ready for prime time and, yes, the size of their database is small).  If you need that level of granularity for U.K. ancestry, the test at LivingDNA can be worthwhile even though it lacks any value in matching.

There is one other advantage to testing at LivingDNA.  They use a chip that checks a broader range of locations than chips used elsewhere and by exporting the DNA results and uploading to GEDmatch, MyHeritage, and FTDNA (amongst others), one can find matches there that might not match results from some other test provider.

I have had some decent matches at 23andMe, FTDNA, and MyHeritage, but by far the greatest results have been from Ancestry with their large database and new features such as Common Ancestors and ThruLines (too bad they have no chromosome browser).

Comments

I agree with your assessment Thom.  I forgot to mention the LivingDNA benefit of the upgraded chip that is used, which I have used on GEDmatch and have just submitted today on MyHeritage.