A digital pregnancy test is a home pregnancy test that can be purchased from a drug, convenience, or grocery store, without a prescription. It works by detecting human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which is often referred to as the pregnancy hormone, in a woman’s urine. Unlike, other home pregnancy tests, a digital pregnancy test doesn’t use lines or plus or minus symbols to indicate whether the test is positive or negative. Instead, it usually produces a clear yes-or-no answer. For this reason, a digital pregnancy test is said to be more difficult to misread than others.
Digital home pregnancy tests typically use urine to determine whether a woman is pregnant or not. If a woman’s egg has been fertilized and embedded in her uterus, hCG can be detected in her urine after a time. Home pregnancy tests detect the presence of this hormone once it reaches certain levels. If hCG is detected, a woman receives a positive result. If it is not detected, however, her results are negative.
Many women have had problems with using the traditional type of home pregnancy test. This type of test often produces one line if the test is negative and two if it is positive. While these results may seem clear, the result window isn’t always easy to read. In some cases, the result window may display one dark line and one faint line, which may prove confusing. Sometimes one of the lines is only partially there or appears to be in the wrong place.
To eliminate confusing test results, a woman may opt to choose a digital pregnancy test instead. A result from this type of pregnancy test is usually much more difficult to confuse. Instead of using lines or plus signs to provide a test result, a digital pregnancy test displays the word “yes” or the word “no.” As such, there is little chance that a user will confuse a negative result for a positive one or vice-versa.
While digital pregnancy tests work in the same manner as non-digital pregnancy tests, there may be a major difference in tests made by different manufacturers. These differences have nothing to do with whether the test is digital or not. Some manufacturers make tests that are more sensitive than others. For example, some tests may only be capable of detecting pregnancy after a woman has already missed a period while others may provide results before a woman’s period is even due.
