buying guides
How to choose the best ovulation kit
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If you’re trying for a baby, the key to conceiving is to make sure you’re having sex during the most fertile period of your menstrual cycle: that is, around the time of ovulation.
Generally, this happens roughly halfway through your cycle, but the more precise you can be about it, the better the chances of getting pregnant.
Ovulation kits detect when your body is about to release an egg, assisting fertility by letting you know when it’s the best time to have sex.
1. One Step® 20 x Ovulation Tests
*Simple, reliable and 99.9% accurate
*All tests are individually foil wrapped and sealed with long expiry dates
*Only cost around 15p each
You can buy these basic strip tests in bulk from Amazon, with a bumper pack of 90 individual test strips costing under £10, or you can buy as few as 10 at a time for just a few pounds.
2. Digital Ovulation Test Kit
*At home urine test which pinpoints your two most fertile days
*Over 99% accurate at detecting the hormone (LH) surge
*Easy to read as a smiley face appears if hormones are detected
Clearblue sell these in handy packs of 10 and the digital interface is easy to read while the ergonomic handle makes them easy to use.
3. Clearblue Fertility Monitor
*The only monitor you can also use to test for pregnancy
*Proven to increase the chances of getting pregnant naturally by 89%
*99% accurate at detecting the LH surge
This Clearblue advanced fertility monitor has an easy touch screen, and can also double as a pregnancy test.
How much should I spend on an ovulation kit?
Ovulation predictor kits start from as little as a couple of pounds for a bumper pack of basic dipstick test strips, like the kind a doctor would use to test your wee for a urine infection.
These work like a pregnancy test by testing the levels of hormones in your urine. Coloured lines appear to indicate whether you’re about to ovulate.
If you spend a little more, you can buy more sophisticated ovulation tests, which work on the same principle but are more like conventional pregnancy tests, where you wee on the stick.
These tend to be a little clearer to read, for example showing a smiley face if you’re in your fertile period.
Expect to pay around £20 for two months’ supply of test sticks.
An alternative to urine testing is saliva testing. For this, you’ll need a microscope: special ones designed for assisting fertility cost around £25. These take a little more expertise to use, as you don’t get a straightforward yes/no result.
At the upper end of the scale are digital fertility monitors. These cost from around £60, plus about £15 per month for replacement test sticks.
What are the key features of an ovulation kit?
Ovulation predictor kits that test your urine work by monitoring levels of one or two hormones – oestrogen and luteinising hormone (LH) – which both soar when you’re about to ovulate.
These can be up to 99 per cent accurate in identifying your most fertile time, with kits that test both hormones being more reliable than those that just check one or the other.
You’re most likely to conceive in the 12 to 36 hours after the hormone surge.
Although there’s no real difference in accuracy between these tests, the cheap ones require you to collect a sample of your urine in a clean container first thing in the morning and dip the stick in to test your hormone levels.
These are good value if you’re planning to chart your fertile times long term, but can be a bit of a faff to use.
The more expensive branded sticks are more convenient, as you just need to wee on the test – no collecting or cleaning necessary – but costs can obviously mount if you take a while to get pregnant.
Fertility microscopes are pocket-sized microscopes that look a bit like a lipstick.
You place a drop of your saliva on the lens and wait for it to dry before examining it; if the sample looks like blobs, you’re not in a fertile period, but if it looks like ferns, it’s a good time to try for a baby.
There’s no extra monthly outlay with these, although they can take a bit of time to master.
Increasing the budget for a digital ovulation monitor means that while you’ll still have to pee on a test stick, the machine will interpret the results for you and tell you clearly when you’re fertile.
You can also store useful information like the details of your past few cycles and the dates on which you had sex, but you’ll need to buy new test sticks each month.
What else do I need to know about ovulation kits?
If you’re using a standard ovulation kit that tests your urine, it’s helpful to know roughly when your fertile period is likely to start, so you don’t waste sticks by testing at times when you’re definitely not fertile.
This is usually around the midpoint of your cycle, but you can find ovulation calculator tools online that will help you work out when to begin testing.
Salivary ferning microscopes aren’t as accurate as urine tests, as the fern pattern sometimes appears at other stages in your cycle.
There is a third way to test for ovulation, which involves taking your temperature daily and plotting it on a chart.
A rise in body temperature that lasts three days indicates ovulation.
However, this can be affected by many factors, including broken sleep or alcohol, so is less reliable.
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Checklist
- Most ovulation kits work by detecting a surge of fertility hormones in your urine, showing when you’re fertile.
- Cheaper sticks are just as reliable but more fiddly to use. The more expensive ones are easier to use and read.
- You can also check for fertile times using a salivary ferning microscope, but the results are harder to interpret and less accurate than urine tests.
Read on:
- How to choose a pregnancy test
- The best pregnancy tests for under a fiver
- How to fake a pregnancy glow
