This New Chinese Cruiser Has More Useful Tech Than A Lot Of HarleysRideApart[email protected] (Enrico Punsalang)Thu, September 17, 2026 at 12:14 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleBenda Rock 700Benda decided that the best cruiser tech might simply be the stuff that makes riding one much easier.Cruisers are supposed to be easy motorcycles. Low seats, relaxed ergonomics, torquey engines, and not much interest in turning every ride into a qualifying lap. And yet, for a category supposedly built around taking it easy, plenty of cruisers still ask you to wrestle with a heavy bike at parking-lot speeds and work a clutch through every miserable mile of stop-and-go traffic. Benda apparently looked at all of that and decided there was room for improvement.Enter the new Benda Rock 707, a 692cc V-twin cruiser that's headed to European dealers starting in mid-September. At first glance, it's familiar cruiser stuff: long and low proportions, chunky 16-inch wheels, belt drive, a steel frame, and a fairly traditional-looking V-twin sitting right in the middle. But underneath all that is some genuinely clever hardware that you don't commonly find on cruisers, including ones costing a whole lot more.Benda Rock 700The big one is its electronically controlled dual-chamber rear air suspension. The Rock 707 can automatically adjust its ride height depending on load and riding conditions, and more importantly, it can lower itself when you come to a stop. Seat height can vary between 690mm and 720mm, meaning the bike can squat down as you put a foot down, then raise itself again once you're rolling. Anyone who's ever caught a heavy cruiser on an awkwardly cambered gas station driveway will immediately understand why that's useful.AdvertisementAdvertisementAnd yes, it is fairly heavy. Benda lists the Rock 707 at around 518 pounds ready to ride. So giving riders an easier reach to the ground isn't solving some imaginary problem cooked up for the brochure. It's the kind of feature that could make a meaningful difference for shorter riders, newer riders, or anyone who simply doesn't enjoy doing a 500-pound balancing act every time traffic turns red.Small Bikes, Tons Of TechA 125cc Beginner Motorcycle Has No Business Looking This GoodThis Cheap Electric Scooter Has ABS, Traction Control, Blind-Spot Monitoring, And GPSBenda Rock 700Benda Rock 700Photos by: Benda MotorcyclesThen there's Benda's BEC MK-III electronic clutch. The system uses electronic control and mechanical actuation to let you pull away, shift gears, and stop without touching the clutch lever. You still change gears through the six-speed transmission yourself, and the clutch lever remains available whenever you want conventional control. It's suspiciously similar to Honda's e-Clutch tech, but we can't be a hundred-percent sure that it's a direct clone.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe rest of the bike isn't exactly bare-bones either. There's ride-by-wire, cruise control, traction control, ABS, a slipper clutch, an upside-down fork, a 3.6-inch TFT display, and an aluminum swingarm. The liquid-cooled V-twin makes around 72 horsepower at 9,000 rpm and 50.2 pound-feet of torque at 6,500 rpm. Those aren't numbers that'll scare a performance cruiser, but that's missing the point.Benda Rock 700What makes the Rock 707 interesting isn't that Benda has created the fastest, biggest, or most luxurious cruiser. It's that a relatively young Chinese manufacturer is looking at one of motorcycling's most tradition-heavy segments and asking some very serious questions. Why shouldn't a cruiser lower itself when you stop? Why should you have to work the clutch through gridlock? Why can't old-school styling coexist with modern, cutting-edge technology?Of course, it goes without saying that Harley-Davidson and Indian still own the cultural side of the cruiser world, and Benda isn't changing that with one 692cc V-twin. But when a Chinese cruiser is showing up with self-lowering suspension and an electronic clutch while plenty of expensive American bikes are still selling tradition as the main event, the old guard might want to keep an eye on what's coming up behind it.Benda Rock 700Benda Rock 700Benda Rock 700AdvertisementAdvertisementBenda Rock 700Benda Rock 700Benda Rock 700Benda Rock 700AdvertisementAdvertisementBenda Rock 700Benda Rock 700Source: Benda, MCN