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The Fire HD8 tablets go on sale a couple times each year for $59. One such sale is going on right now, for Fathers Day. You can also expect this lower price on Prime Day and during the Black Friday sales if things continue as they have been. So the Walmart tablet does not have much of a price advantage, unless you need a tablet right now and you happen to have that need when one of Amazon's sales is not going on. It's pretty simple to get Google's Play Store installed on a Fire tablet. The one advantage of the Walmart tablet is that it runs Android 9 rather than FireOS. This is not as big a deal as it seems, since these cheap tablets are not real computing devices made for productivity, IMHO. At this price point and level of sophistication you're not getting something that could substitute for a computer. They are really "media consumption devices", and given that, it may actually be an advantage to have the Fire tablet tied into Amazon from the get-go. That is, if you are already tied into Amazon's ecosystem with things like Prime, purchased eBooks, Audible, etc. I wouldn't want an expensive tablet tied into any vendor, but a cheap one like the Fire, I don't mind the tie-in. I spent more for dinner last night than I did on my Fire HD8.
The more I look at these two low-end competing tablets, the less difference I see in them. Buy one, buy the other - it probably doesn't matter which one you end up with in the long run. The cost is nearly identical, given all the sales that Amazon typically has. It's like a can of tuna - Starkist or Chicken of the Sea? Remove the label and I doubt anyone could tell the difference. So you buy the one that is the cheapest at the specific moment you decide to purchase.
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