Jeff Dunn for Engadget
Apple’s iPads get all the headlines, and with good reason: They’ve long been considered the best tablets for most people. But none of them come cheap. For folks on a tighter budget, I’ve spent the last few weeks testing a couple of 8-inch slates on the dirt-cheap end of the price spectrum: the $100 (but frequently discounted) Amazon Fire HD 8 and the $79 Walmart Onn 8”. We pitted the two slates head-to-head below, not only to figure out which one is better, but also to diagnose the state of ultra-budget tablets as a whole.
You’ll never get truly “premium” hardware when you shop in this price range, but the Onn makes a nicer first impression than Amazon’s Fire tab. It sort of resembles a budget iPad mini, with a chilly aluminum back, squared-off edges and firm side buttons. Most people I handed it to over the course of my testing were immediately surprised at how decent it felt for something so cheap.
The Fire HD 8 wears its price more clearly. It’s mostly made from a hard textured plastic, with slightly thicker yet more rounded sides and flimsier buttons. The front facing camera and dual speakers sit on the long edge, so it’s mainly designed to be held horizontally for streaming video or playing games. The Onn has a more traditional setup, with its selfie camera at the top and two speakers firing out the bottom edge, so it’s not as accommodating for streaming shows or making video calls.
I found the Fire HD 8 easier to hold for longer stretches. The gently curved sides don’t dig into your palms as much as the Onn’s flat edges, and while the larger bezels aren’t pretty, they give your thumbs a more natural place to sit. The Onn in particular can be prone to accidental inputs, something its thinner bezels exacerbate. With either device, you’re getting a tablet that’s just under 0.8 pounds — easy to hold with one hand and highly portable.
But there are several other hardware benefits you give up when you dive into the bargain bin. The cameras on both tablets are horrid, for one, blurring details and washing out colors even in full daylight. Neither have formal water-resistance ratings, so you’ll want to be careful using either around the sink or tub. Both devices are equipped with a basic USB-C 2.0 port, and neither supports true fast charging. The Fire HD 8 has the edge when it comes to audio, but it’s only slightly better than Walmart’s shrill speakers, which make vocalists sound like they’re shouting through a tin can.
The Onn’s panel is the surprisingly clear winner when you put the two tablets side-by-side, even if you won’t write home about either of the 8-inch IPS LCD screens. Colors are noticeably less muted, black tones are deeper and the whole thing can get a bit brighter. On the flip side, the Fire HD 8 runs much warmer, which layers everything with an orange-ish hue. This makes it easier on the eyes at night, but it dulls colors, washes out black tones and generally looks dimmer.
Both screens are saddled with a low 1,280 x 800 resolution, which is sharp enough for displays this small but still makes text and images fuzzier than they’d appear on an iPad or pricier Android slate. Amazon’s tablet is also a major smudge and fingerprint magnet, plus it’s more difficult to read outdoors. The Onn doesn’t exactly excel in these areas either, but it’s better.
However, Amazon’s tablet has one big advantage over the Onn tablet: it can play content from the most popular video streaming services, including Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Paramount+ and Max, at 720p. Walmart’s tablet caps out at 480p resolution when streaming from these apps, because it doesn’t fully support Google’s DRM platform that many of these apps require.
This sucks, no two ways about it. Video streaming apps are the apps many people buy a tablet to use, and while the Onn’s display is generally more vibrant, the difference isn’t nearly large enough to overcome video streams that look like they were ripped in 2010.
Both the Onn and the Fire HD 8 are about as cheap as Android tablets get, and their performance follows suit. On paper, the former wins by a hair: Both come with 3GB of RAM, but Walmart’s slate runs on a 2 GHz eight-core chip, while Amazon’s uses a 2 GHz six-core processor. In our testing, we found the Onn tablet performed better than Amazon’s on the Geekbench 5 benchmark.
In practice, however, there isn’t much difference. With both, you’re looking at light media consumption and little more. Apps, videos and ebooks load quickly enough to not completely annoy you. Web browsing is adequate so long as you don’t open more than a few tabs at a time, and casual card and match-three games play well enough. But expect hiccups along the way: Pulling up the app drawer on the Onn sometimes took a second more than it should. There’s a slight but noticeable lag when you scroll down the home screen on the Fire HD 8. Multitasking or doing any serious work on either device is out of the question.
Both tablets also come with a paltry 32GB of storage. This means you likely won’t be able to install more than a few apps and games to either device at any given time. Thankfully, you can add up to 1TB of room with a microSD card — a feature that is not available on any iPad. This will be a must if you want to download videos for offline viewing.
One benefit of having a lower-spec device is that it won’t chew through battery life. Walmart says the Onn can last up to 15 hours, while Amazon rates the Fire HD 8 at up to 13 hours. Those are generous estimates, but both devices should last more than 10 or 11 hours on a charge with typical mixed use. In our testing, the Onn survives a pinch longer between the two, but the difference is minimal.
The biggest distinction between the Onn and the Fire HD 8 comes down to their radically different takes on Android. The Onn tablet runs Android 14; the only app Walmart pre-installs is its own (natch) and you can delete it if you want. You have access to all Google services like Gmail and Chrome from the jump, swiping left on the home screen takes you to the Discover news feed and you can download just about any other app from the Play Store.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s tablets still run Fire OS, a fork of Android 11 with a custom app store and an extreme emphasis on the company’s own services. Many of the major streaming and social media services are still available, but plenty of other big-name apps are not, including Reddit, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Slack, any browser besides Amazon’s extremely-basic Silk and tons of popular games. No Google apps are available by default, either.
You have to jump through a few hoops to get Google’s Play Store on a Fire tablet, and (maybe) worse, much of Fire OS feels like it was explicitly designed to nickel-and-dime you, to sell you on everything Amazon. The first app you see upon unlocking the device is literally called “Shop Amazon,” and many Amazon apps come pre-loaded — including Kindle, Amazon Music, Amazon Photos, and Audible — but you have to subscribe in some way to get the most use out of them. Swiping left from the home screen brings you to a “For You” page of content suggestions that constantly promotes those Amazon services and includes a row of sponsored apps toward the top of the page. But the worst are the lockscreen ads: Every time you turn Fire HD 8 on, a full-screen ad for BetMGM, Verizon, a personalized Amazon listing or some other brand is there to greet you. You can turn these ads off — but only if you pony up another $15.
But Fire OS does have some redeeming qualities. The Alexa voice assistant is baked into the device and runs quickly enough; if you have Alexa-compatible smart home devices, you can control them here hands-free. It’s kid-friendly, too, as it lets you create a separate kid profile populated with age-appropriate apps, websites and videos. The Onn offers similar features through Google’s Kids Space mode, but the Fire HD 8 makes those parental controls a bit easier to access, and it’s generally more proactive about locking down the rest of the device.
After poring over the Fire HD 8 and Onn 8 for the past few weeks, my main takeaway has become clear: You should really try to pay for something better. Get an iPad, buy an older refurbished one if you have to, or pay even a little bit extra for a more powerful tablet from Samsung, Lenovo or another name brand.
But that’s not an option for everyone. If you need to spend $100 or less, I’d wait for a sale on the Fire HD 8. The design is generally comfier to hold, and while its display is subpar, the Onn’s inability to stream many popular apps in HD makes it almost impossible for me to recommend in 2025. Fire OS has a lot of annoyances, and yes, expert users can “hack” their way to get access to missing Android apps. But that’s more than what most people are willing to do.
You may be thinking, “They’re cheap tablets, what do you expect?” While that may be true, it doesn’t change the fact that these low-cost offerings force budget-conscious consumers to make frustrating sacrifices. Ultimately, if you want the good stuff, you have to pay for it.