The Denali D7 Pro Multi-Beam driving light pods with the Modular X-Lens System are the newest and brightest addition to the Denali Electronics LED lineup. The new D7 Pro kit ($798) claims to blast nearly 24,000 lumens of daylight in front of you. That translated to the D7 Pro’s illuminating objects 1000 feet in front of the Ultimate Motorcycling Yamaha Ténéré 700 Project Bike.
Being able to see-to-stop is a critical safety issue, whether on a twisty road or in the darkness of a deserted freeway on a moonless night. At full intensity, the Denali D7 Pro LED pods draw a hefty 98 watts and 8 amps each. Each IP68- and 69K-rated waterproof pod measures 4.4 inches and is 2.9 inches deep.
There are seven 14-watt Cree XML3 LEDs in each pod. They are arranged as two on top, two on bottom, and three across the center. The center array acts as floodlights, and the top and bottom pairs spot beams for distance. The spots and floods can be run simultaneously, or controlled separately depending on your riding conditions. Three snap-on flood lenses are supplied with each pod—white, amber, and yellow.
You can wire all seven LEDs to come on full blast with a single switch using the supplied 2-into-1 pigtail, or you can separate the distance spots and flood into two switches. I chose to use the Denali DialDim Lighting Controller. It controls both light configurations and allows 0-100 percent dimming of each configuration independently. The DialDim ($249) can be purchased as a universal fit or bike-specific kit. I chose the universal kit as I might want to move these amazingly bright lights to the next Ultimate Motorcycling Project Bike.
The Ténéré 700 DialDim Controller kit ($288 MSRP) comes with a bike-specific wiring harness that easily connects your blinkers, horn, and headlight to the D7 Pro LEDs and the DialDim controller. The universal DialDim kit has a pigtail to accomplish the same thing, though you have to find the correct wires and connect to them using the supplied pin taps. With the bike-specific kit (or the universal pigtail correctly connected), when you turn on your blinkers, the spot beam on that side will shut off, and the flood (with the snap on amber or yellow tint) will blink along with your OEM blinker. If you hit your horn, all LEDs will flash. When you hit your High Beam switch, the DialDim will turn on the D7s to the intensity you previously set.
Even if you do not want to enable the blinkers, high beam, or horn functions of the universal pigtail, you still need to connect the white Ignition wire from that pigtail to a key-switched connection. If you don’t, the DialDim controller will not come alive—there went an hour of troubleshooting before my aha moment.
The D7 Pro lights require a sturdy mounting bracket that can be purchased from Denali or a third party. Denali’s Ténéré 700-specific mounting bracket ($88) won’t work for my Ténéré because I have upper-mounted crash bars taking up the mounting holes. The Driving Light Mount ($84) was out of stock when I ordered the D7 Pro lights, so I went with a third-party crash-bar mount that should hold the 1.8-pound pods in place. All of the rough roads where I am are covered with snow right now, so I won’t know if I need to upgrade my mounts for a while.
Clicking all the wires together through the DialDim was the quick part of the installation. The routing of the wires from the battery area under the seat, up to the front for the lights, and the DialDim Controller switch mounted on the handlebars, took me an evening to accomplish. I had to pull the side panels and lift the tank. I mounted the DialDim switch as close to the left grip as possible, next to the left mirror stalk.
From experience, I know it is essential to be able to dim extremely bright lights quickly to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. When properly adjusted to two inches below the center of the mounting height at 25 feet, the center of the beam won’t be in an oncoming driver’s eyes. However, they will still get a whole bunch of your D7 light blasted at them, even from 1000 feet away.
If you use a simple all-on/all-off handlebar switch, your choices are simple; the DialDim Controller provides many more options. The push/dial button is large, vertically raised, and winter glove-friendly. It is easy to get a thumb on it to push or rotate. There are many push and rotate-to-control options available.
I have the four-spot spot beams on the blue circuit and the middle three flood beams on the green circuit. Each is controlled separately. The DialDim controller remembers the settings you dialed in before shutting off power. If they were off when you shut down, they will be off when you start up. The DialDim goes through its own self-check sequence, showing green if you have good battery strength, and red if you don’t. The green halo around the dial will disappear; with no LEDs on, the switch is dark.
Double tapping the button turns on the blue circuit first, and a blue halo appears with a circular indication of the brightness level set before it was turned off. A second double tap turns on the green circuit, and the halo indicates the percent of brightness. Press-and-hold turns off either circuit when it is selected.
If you have both circuits on high using the DialDim and you have oncoming traffic that you want to dim or shut off for, you have a lot of time-consuming thumb movements to accomplish in a very short window. After riding with these amazingly bright lights for a while, I prefer to have only the spot beams on when distance lighting is needed. Then, when there is oncoming traffic, I can simply roll the thumbwheel button counterclockwise to dim down and roll it back clockwise to brighten up. This is much faster than press-and-hold to turn it off and then double-click to turn it back on. In twisty areas or urban settings, I only use the green circuit (floods) and roll them on or off as needed.
If I were using the 2-into-1 pigtail off the D7 Pro pods, the spots and floods would be on the same circuit, and I would control the maximum intensity of all seven LEDs with just one circuit. How you set them up depends on how you want to use the available flexibility. Do you prefer amber daytime running lights without the spots on, or seven LEDs on during the day and dialed down to 10 percent for oncoming visibility? The DialDim Controller gives you many options.
For my photos, I covered the Ténéré’s low beam with paper so I would only capture the projected light from the Denali D7 Pro pods. On a straight, unlit street with light traffic, I measured 1000 feet from my bike to the stop sign. Although my iPhone 14 couldn’t record it, I could read the stop sign clearly with the spot beam on high intensity. I could also clearly see the telephone pole 900 feet away and on the other side of the street.
My iPhone gave me light-intensity feedback by how quickly it snapped the shutter. The more light it was seeing, the faster the shutter clicked. With both circuits on full intensity, the shutter duration felt the same as in daylight. There is no way to show with a photo the anxiety reduction that comes with being able to see as far ahead and as wide as the D7 Pro’s light up.
The new Denali D7 Pro Multi-Beam Driving Light Pods are extremely bright. They will light up the road over 1000 feet ahead with the four spots on high intensity and give you over 200 feet of horizontal visibility using the center LEDs simultaneously. At 60 mph, that is seeing at least 10 seconds ahead, which is almost the same as daytime look-ahead. If you aren’t someone who rides at night, then having large, high-intensity floods in amber or orange might be just what you need to be seen at just the right moment, such as when approaching an intersection. Either way, the Denali D7 Pro Multi-Beam Driving Light Pods are a huge step up in lighting from the stock Ténéré 700 headlight.
