diff --git a/dtale/pandas_util.py b/dtale/pandas_util.py
index a4451f3f..60bf71c2 100644
--- a/dtale/pandas_util.py
+++ b/dtale/pandas_util.py
@@ -3,8 +3,12 @@
 from pkg_resources import parse_version
 
 
+def check_pandas_version(version_number):
+    return parse_version(pd.__version__) >= parse_version(version_number)
+
+
 def has_dropna():
-    return parse_version(pd.__version__) >= parse_version("1.1.0")
+    return check_pandas_version("1.1.0")
 
 
 def groupby(df, index, dropna=True):
@@ -22,4 +26,4 @@ def groupby_code(index, dropna=True):
 
 
 def is_pandas2():
-    return parse_version(pd.__version__) >= parse_version("2.0.0")
+    return check_pandas_version("2.0.0")
diff --git a/dtale/views.py b/dtale/views.py
index 2d621e91..cda050dc 100644
--- a/dtale/views.py
+++ b/dtale/views.py
@@ -2171,7 +2171,13 @@ def describe(data_id):
             .sort_values(["count", "value"], ascending=[False, True])
             .head(100)
         )
-        uniq_grp["value"] = uniq_grp["value"].astype(uniq_type)
+        # pandas started supporting string dtypes in 1.1.0
+        conversion_type = (
+            "object"
+            if pandas_util.check_pandas_version("1.1.0") and uniq_type == "string"
+            else uniq_type
+        )
+        uniq_grp["value"] = uniq_grp["value"].astype(conversion_type)
         uniq_f, _ = build_formatters(uniq_grp)
         return_data["uniques"][uniq_type] = dict(
             data=uniq_f.format_dicts(uniq_grp.itertuples()), total=total, top=top
diff --git a/tests/dtale/dash/test_extended_aggregation_charts.py b/tests/dtale/dash/test_extended_aggregation_charts.py
index 262c65bb..f136af34 100644
--- a/tests/dtale/dash/test_extended_aggregation_charts.py
+++ b/tests/dtale/dash/test_extended_aggregation_charts.py
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 import pandas as pd
-import platform
 import pytest
+from pkg_resources import parse_version
 
 import dtale.global_state as global_state
 
@@ -121,8 +121,7 @@ def test_bar_and_popup(unittest):
                 "title": {"text": "Mean of c"},
             },
         }
-        major, minor, revision = [int(i) for i in platform.python_version_tuple()]
-        if major == 3 and minor > 6:
+        if parse_version(pd.__version__) >= parse_version("1.3.0"):
             del expected["yaxis2"]["tickformat"]
         unittest.assertEqual(
             resp_data["chart-content"]["children"]["props"]["children"][1]["props"][
diff --git a/tests/dtale/test_views.py b/tests/dtale/test_views.py
index b4950976..787993d2 100644
--- a/tests/dtale/test_views.py
+++ b/tests/dtale/test_views.py
@@ -6,9 +6,9 @@
 import os
 import dtale.global_state as global_state
 import pandas as pd
-import platform
 import pytest
 from pandas.tseries.offsets import Day
+from pkg_resources import parse_version
 from six import PY3
 
 import dtale.pandas_util as pandas_util
@@ -1233,8 +1233,7 @@ def _df():
         response = c.get(
             "/dtale/variance/{}".format(c.port), query_string=dict(col="x")
         )
-        major, minor, revision = [int(i) for i in platform.python_version_tuple()]
-        if major == 3 and minor > 6:
+        if parse_version(pd.__version__) >= parse_version("1.3.0"):
             expected["x"]["check2"]["val1"]["val"] = 0
             expected["x"]["check2"]["val2"]["val"] = 1
         response_data = json.loads(response.data)