New bike help: Hyper Havoc or Schwinn Sidewinder
 

I’m looking for a bike to ride with my kid. I’m 37 and haven’t been on a bike since I was a teenager.
I want to stay under $200. We’ll mostly be riding in the street, paved bike trails and eventually some light mountain bike trails (nothing too crazy).
After checking out bikes at Academy and Walmart, I liked these two the best, but can’t figure out which one I like better. I’ve only tried them in store because I don’t want to put any rough wear on the tires so i can take the one back that I don’t keep.
What do you all suggest? Anything about either of these two bikes scream “stay away” to any of you more experienced with bikes?
In case it helps with the suggestions, I’m short and fat (5’3” and about 205-210 lbs)
Thanks for your time!

Edited because I can’t post links yet.

The bikes I’m talking about are:

26” Hyper Havoc from Walmart -item 564459821

26” Schwinn Sidewinder from Walmart - item 565429974

ChrisJr, welcome to the forums. I will first be rather blunt and say that most folks here would give you the advice, “neither of them.” At that price range the parts are not well made and are likely to be problematic over time. For your budget, your best bet would be to look for a used steel-framed hybrid or mountain bike, with no suspension, from the late 80s or early 90s. They can often be found for less than a hundred.

But that said, of the two bikes there is one big difference that makes the choice easy. And that is, the Hyper has a rear suspension. The suspension system on cheap bikes is their biggest drawback. They add (a lot of) weight, do not work well in the beginning, and are impossible to repair when they break. So, of the two bikes the Schwinn would be best.

The thing about bikes and suspension is that unless you are looking to ride over truly gnarly stuff (large rocks, roots, downed trees, and the like) the best suspension comes from good tires and the rider’s knees. For general road and gravel riding suspension is just not needed.

You're in a bit of a tricky spot with that budget and experience level. Anything you can buy new isn't worth buying (for the reasons Aubergine gave you), but anything used would require decent bike knowledge to assess and/or to repair into good rideable condition. Do you have a bike co-op or similar where you're located? How about a friend who knows bikes who could help you browse through Craigslist?

In your shoes I would be looking along the lines of what Aubergine suggested, probably trying to keep the budget to ~$100 so that you can spend another $100 for a tune-up and parts replacement.

One piece of advice for anyone buying a bike from Walmart is to have someone familiar with bike mechanics do a thorough going over to see that the bike has been assembled correctly. My own personal horror story involved a Scout who showed up on a brand new Walmart fully-suspended beast for the first (10 mile) of five rides culminating in a 50 mile ride in 8 hours. I checked the brakes and steering but missed the fact that the cranks were just stuck on and not been tightened. Both cranks fell off within the first mile and were stripped. We had warned his dad who never buys inexpensive toys for himself about the problems with Walmart bikes but he knows ALL. It's stupid to put an 80 pound kid on a 40 pound bike! He showed up for the subsequent 10 mile ride on his 3rd Walmart bike but was unable to complete that 10 miles because of the bike weight. He's never tried again.

ChrisJr, if you let us know what area you’re in, sometimes people will send you local listings of a bike that would make sense and seems like it could be trusted for a certain budget. Let us know...

better of with a used bike from craigslist. less risk. you'll probably change bikes as you gain experience so going used costs less money. same thing with kids bikes. they seem to change size every cpl years. so glad my kids finally reached adult size. 2 kids 5 diff. bikes, that's 10 bikes!