Also great
If you’re positive that your mixed mutt is made up of an unusual breed or two, Wisdom Panel Premium is the kit to get. It tested for more breeds than any service we reviewed, the collection process was easy to follow, results arrived quickly, and it was cheaper. But since it uses fewer DNA markers than Embark, its results are less precise.
Wisdom Panel tests for over 350 different breeds, including 97% of all breeds recognized by the AKC. (That covers more AKC breeds than any dog DNA kit we researched.) Comparatively, Embark includes 90%, and DNA My Dog tests for 49% of the breed list. Thus, this is the best service for dogs adopted from abroad or suspected of having a highly unique breed in their genetic code. Wisdom Panel’s database covers a variety of breeds found around the world, including the Brazilian terrier, the coyote, the Jindo, the Lacy, the Mexican street dog, and the wolf.
Hughes, Wisdom Panel’s veterinary geneticist, said that its international purebred DNA collection efforts were widespread so the product could be both accurate and accessible to most dog owners. A robust breed database, she said, is a side effect of that commitment. “It’s very important to find a database that has those weird and wonderful breeds,” she said.
When results are ready, owners see the dog’s breed breakdown by percentages, including any breed that’s more than 1% of your pet’s ancestry. Anything below the 1% threshold is removed, and all the other numbers are nudged slightly so they add up to 100%. These very specific small percentages may give the illusion of a more accurate result, but according to our experts, anything below 5% is difficult to know for sure. (Our main pick Embark lumps results that are less than 5% into a “supermutt” category, which we prefer since it avoids giving a false impression of how accurate the test is.)
The Wisdom Panel report also shows information beyond just the breed breakdown. They provide a family tree going back to the dog’s “great grandparents,” as well as a series of trait markers that will tell you things such as your pet’s coat color and type—or at least what the company guesses it is from the DNA. The report also includes health information, like your pet’s ideal weight range (which was accurate for our testers), and a number of genetic health markers that will show if your pet is “at risk,” “notable,” and “clear” for various diseases and conditions.
Over the years, Wisdom Panel has refined its accuracy claims—both as the science evolves and to attract customers. In 2019, Hughes said Wisdom Panel’s breed results were 93% accurate, slightly lower than Embark’s reported 95% to 99% accuracy rate. In 2021, the company stopped disclosing accuracy rates. As of 2022, Wisdom Panel claimed a 98% accuracy rate. And even though it’s nice to see as many mixes in your mutt as possible, our experts said such refined details aren’t the most accurate.
Dog owners can share their pet’s findings by downloading a breed breakdown chart, or grant anyone access to the full report via a shareable link.
Wisdom Panel Premium’s DNA collection method is straightforward. You remove two bristle wands from the sanitary sleeve and swab the inside of the dog’s cheek with each wand. Then you stand each wand upright in the included box, using built-in holes, and let it dry before mailing it back using the prepaid shipping container.
Our five panelists rated Wisdom Panel’s instructions higher than Embark’s method. Our testers agreed that Wisdom Panel’s single set of instructions was easier to follow than the redundant versions Embark provided on its box, cardboard insert, protective sleeve, and website.
In 2019, Wisdom Panel’s results also arrived faster than those of most kits we tested. The Wisdom Panel results averaged 18 days, Embark’s averaged 21 days, and we stopped counting after 60 days for DNA My Dog. Wisdom Panel’s breed and genetic-disease results also arrived simultaneously, while with Embark there was a one- or two-day gap between the health report and breed results. In our 2021 update, Wisdom Panel’s results averaged 25 days, but we believe this to be a temporary issue.
Wisdom Panel Premium costs $160 for both breed and genetic-disease detection, which is $40 less than Embark But if that’s still too pricey, opt for Wisdom Panel Essential, which is just the breed identification kit. At $100, it’s significantly cheaper than the price of Embark, and it is a great option for frugal dog owners who are curious about the breed heredity of their pets.
Wisdom Panel’s commitment to research and privacy
Like Embark, Wisdom Health (Wisdom Panel’s parent company) sponsors the IPFD, the group harmonizing the canine genetic-testing industry. It also conducts canine research based on the DNA samples it receives. For example, an April 2018 study in PLOS Genetics examined 152 diseases in more than 100,000 dogs across 330 breeds. The study reported that mixed-breed dogs are more likely to carry a common recessive disease, and that purebred dogs are more likely to develop a disease from one. Although the findings don’t suggest that a single test is a predictor for disease, Wisdom Panel, in part, believes it can help veterinarians make better treatment decisions.
Although Wisdom Panel is owned by Mars, Incorporated, Wisdom Panel told us in an email that it controls its own data, and “at Wisdom Panel, we may use anonymized composite data for research purposes and this de-identified data may be shared with third parties. However, we never share personal data or results tied to a specific pet without explicit consent from the user.”
Wisdom Panel also maintains a strict privacy policy. It doesn’t share information with third parties without the account holder’s written consent, similar to HIPAA. And with an account holder’s consent, a veterinarian may consult Wisdom Panel’s in-house vet geneticists about a pet patient’s results.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
Wisdom Panel uses half the number of the genetic markers that Embark does to determine breed compositions—100,000, compared with 200,000 markers—so the results may not be as precise. Genetic scientists use these markers to map out a dog’s DNA without examining a dog’s entire 3-billion-base-pair genome. They can save resources by strategically selecting the appropriate markers and comparing them to Wisdom’s dog breed database, using a sophisticated algorithm that will calculate the genetic lineage of a pup that’s the most feasible. Yet a handful of strategically placed markers alone doesn’t guarantee the best results.
Think of DNA markers as random puzzle pieces in an image you haven’t assembled. The few pieces you do possess tell you the photo has shades of blue. But blue can represent anything from the sky or the ocean to tapestry yarns or a funky dinner plate. The more puzzle pieces you’ve joined, the fuller the picture gets. “Sometimes we don’t know what we’re looking for,” said Hekman, who recommended Embark for most dog owners since it uses more genetic markers than the competition. “We’re still missing a lot of information when we use just markers; the more markers are better.”
Additionally, Wisdom Panel redistributes any ancestry results below 1% equally into the other breeds on the report. According to a spokesperson, this “does not significantly alter the overall results,” which mirrors our experts’ findings that anything less than 5% probably isn’t accurate and isn’t worth trusting. Wirecutter prefers Embark’s methodology because it uses twice as many markers, and clumps breed results under 5% into “supermutt” categories. The exception to this is when there’s already a closely related “sibling breed” in the results, in which case Embark adds the sub-5% numbers to that breed since chances are that’s where it belongs.
Wisdom Panel also screens for 211 genetic health conditions, and it lists the status of each disease as “at risk,” “notable” or “clear.” In 2019, our dog panelists had consistent results among the diseases that Wisdom Panel and Embark both tested for, with one exception: Embark reported that Sutton was “at risk” for dilated cardiomyopathy, while Wisdom Panel did not. When asked about the mismatch, Hughes said Wisdom Panel doesn’t report at-risk statuses for dogs with breed makeups that are not at risk for the disease, but she confirmed that Sutton had tested positive for the mutation. She added that they’ve tested over one million dogs, and “the correlation to actual clinical disease is not supported in the vast majority of these breeds.” We appreciate Wisdom Panel’s rationale of limiting stress among dog owners—after all, someone could end up euthanizing a pet because of frightening genetic health results. But when polled, Wirecutter’s pet owners unanimously agreed that they’d prefer to be able to access all of the information they’d paid for, and to be able to discuss their results with a vet.
When questions did arise during testing, Wisdom Panel, like Embark, responded within one business day. But Wisdom Panel is less likely than Embark to rerun breed results at a pet owner’s request. A pet owner may elect to rerun a test if the breed database and algorithm have significantly changed, such as the addition of new breeds. Two of our panelists submitted Wisdom Panel tests in 2016 and 2017, and in May 2019 Wisdom Panel declined to rerun both, citing different reasons. Wisdom Panel also gave disparate rationales on not retesting dozens of outdated kits from other users, from “not enough genetic data” to “we don’t expect a change in results.” As a compromise, some owners claimed they were offered discount codes for new tests, but others were not.
In 2020, Wisdom Panel upgraded its chip to use more than 100,000 genetic markers to test for dog ancestry and to review more than 200 genetic traits, and it’s now called Wisdom Panel Premium. The company announced plans to let customers who have used the test within the last five years get updated versions of their results for free. But as of writing time, Wisdom Panel couldn’t rerun our tests from 2019 and asked us to submit new DNA kits.
Finally, Wisdom Panel, like most of the kits we tested (but not Embark), uses two collection wands. The heads are bristly, like mascara wands, and are uncomfortable to scrape against the inside of a pup’s cheek. Then you’re supposed to perch the wands upright in the included box to dry them before shipping them back. But the wands wobbled in their stands, and some testers feared they’d fall and get contaminated.
