Hyper Havoc FS Men’s Mountain Bike Review

Hyper Havoc FS Men’s Mountain Bike

This is a review for the Hyper Havoc Full suspension Men’s mountain bike. This bike can be found on Amazon, Ebay, and Walmart for between $110 through $130 USD.

Hyper Havoc Bike: The Pros

The Hyper Havoc FS mountain bike is 26″ in size, it is a 21 speed mountain bike, with Shimono gear shifters. Before I get into all the cons with the bike, I will first tell about the pros.
The most obvious pro is the price, this bike is very cheap and affordable for what you get in the box and for most purposes of daily commutes to the store or to work, it will do perfectly. Just to give you an idea about how durable the bike is I will tell you that I don’t own a car and the nearest grocery store is two and a half miles from where I live, so I have to ride up on the bike trail and back, sometimes with groceries in the front basket (yes, a basket can fit if you rotate the brake levers to the back of the handlebars) and the bike has held up and gone the distance. So far I have owned this bike for close to a month, so I will tell my thoughts about all the pros and cons I have found.
The bike is easy to ride as long as you adjust the seat, oil the chain, and keep the bike maintained, you shouldn’t have too many problems with it straight out the box. It is well assembled (for the most part) and I don’t think the bike will break or disassemble on me while I ride it. As for weight? It is an aluminum frame and the tag that was attached to the bike says that it can hold about 275 lbs or so.

The instructions were not completely helpful for assembling the bike because they were basic and very general, but overall I found it easy to do and I had the entire thing setup in about an hour or so. You can click the above link for detail instructions on how to build this specific bike yourself and all the tools you will need to do so.

Hyper Havoc Bike: The Cons

A few problems I found with the bike are as follows-
First, I don’t like how the handle bars are designed because you need a wrench to tighten them up and put them on. This is slightly annoying because other than the tires, everything else is assembled using hex keys (also known as an allen wrench). I would have prefered if the handlebars required Hex keys because you could use a multi-tool to quickly make adjustments while riding without needing any other items, but as it is now I always have to carry an adjustable wrench with me. The wrench built into my multi-tool is made for tires, so it is slightly too large to fit and adjust the handlebars because they used another type of bolt like screw for it. This is a minor problem because I just added a wrench to my backpack repair kit and moved along.

The next problem is that the bike seat is hard and uncomfortable, if you only ride short distances it isn’t a problem, but if you do between 2 through 5 miles you will start to feel it. I normally stand up, crank the gears up to a harder setting and peddle away so I don’t do much sitting, but if you prefer to sit down and peddle you will have a sore bum by the time you get home; in short, I recommend buying another seat.
The handlebars sometimes wobble and slide out-of-place, not at the base where it connects to the body, but literally at the center “T” joint at the top near where your hands are, it will slip out-of-place and slide around. The only way to adjust that part is again, with a wrench. I have tightened it a few times and it now finally stays in place, but it can be dangerous when it randomly slides over while riding.

The Back tire isn’t fitted in place correctly and is slightly too high up on the rear tire axle shaft. It appears to be tightened in place and secure by the nut screw, but it creeps me out a bit that if the nut were to unscrew a bit the tire would fly out…. I suppose that would happen anyways though. I tried to unscrew it and snap it in place, but the machine that put the nuts on really did a job and got that thing on really tight, so I decided to leave it alone.
The last and probably the biggest problem was that there was no quick release for the bike seat, it was missing from the set. I don’t blame the bike for this but the seller and manufacturer. Even when we tried contacting both the seller and manufacturer they didn’t want to just ship a part out, they instead wanted us to ship the entire thing back and gives us a whole new bike set. That would have been fine, but we had already assembled most of the mountain bike and we didn’t want to repack the entire thing just to ship it out and get another mountain bike that we would have to reassemble.

I was a bit surprised by this because the manufacturer should have sent us the part since the bike was just ordered brand new and we had the order number and receipt. Most products have at least a 30 day warranty that covers basic damage or defects, and the seat not having the adjustable quick release lever for the is clearly a manufacturing defect because it was missing a key component to building and riding the bike, without it you literally cannot sit down to ride the bike. For a product that would have cost the company a minimum of $10 to ship out, I did find it a bit frustrating that their customer service was so poor and we ended up having to pay for the replacement ourselves.

Overall thoughts

I would give this bike an 7/10 for durability and quality. It loses three points for the small defects and bad customer service from the manufacturer and seller. The bike gears and peddles are slightly stiff, but I am sure it will loosen up with a bit of oiling and riding. I would recommend this bike if you are on a budget and need basic transportation for getting around because it does the job and serves its purpose. As far as cheap mountain bikes go, overall the Havoc Hyper FS mountain bike isn’t really all that bad.