Garmin is doubling down on the idea that your race coach can live on your dashboard. With the new Garmin Catalyst 2, the company isn’t just updating a niche motorsport gadget – it’s trying to make data-driven coaching and video analysis feel as normal as checking tire pressures before a track session.

At a glance, Catalyst 2 looks like a shrunken track computer: a compact unit with a bright 3‑inch display, built‑in camera and a simple windshield mount that puts it in the driver’s eyeline. Under the skin, though, it’s closer to a small telemetry lab, pulling in data from accelerometers, gyroscopes, image processing and a high‑rate 25Hz multi‑GNSS receiver to reconstruct an ultra‑precise racing line, braking points and corner speeds. That hardware foundation is what powers Garmin’s pitch: real‑time coaching on track, plus deep but digestible analysis in the paddock through the companion Garmin Catalyst app on your phone or tablet.

The headline feature returning from the original Catalyst is True Optimal Lap, Garmin’s patented trick that stitches together your best segments into a single theoretical “perfect” lap, then plays it back as one composite video. Think of it as a highlight reel of everything you did right – ideal line into Turn 1, best exit from Turn 3, cleanest braking into the hairpin – all spliced into one continuous lap that shows what was possible if you’d strung it all together. For club racers and track‑day regulars, that’s a powerful teaching tool: you’re not guessing where time is hiding, you’re watching a data‑driven “if only” lap with overlays for speed, delta time, track map and even a G‑G traction circle to visualize how hard you’re loading the car through corners.

Where Catalyst 2 really leans into the “coach in a box” idea is its live feedback. Audio cues play through your earbuds or car stereo, calling out when you’re off your marks on braking, not carrying enough speed, or leaving time on the table in a segment the system knows you’ve done better before. Unlike old‑school lap timers that just flash a number, Catalyst is constantly comparing your current lap to what it believes you can achieve, then nudging you in real time to close the gap. Once you come off track, you don’t have to drown in data either – the device automatically surfaces the top three opportunities for improvement, so your debrief focuses on a handful of actionable changes instead of 40 overlapping graphs.

Garmin’s second‑generation hardware also sharpens one of the more under‑the‑radar aspects of the original Catalyst: positioning accuracy. The updated True Track Positioning system fuses that 25Hz multi‑GNSS data with motion sensors and image processing to draw a much more precise line of where the car actually went, corner after corner, lap after lap. For drivers, that matters because subtle changes in line – half a car width earlier turn‑in, a different approach to a late apex – often decide whether you find a few tenths or lose them. A messy trace can hide those nuances; a crisp one makes it obvious why your “felt fast” lap was actually slower than your personal best.

On the software side, Catalyst 2 is designed to follow you off the track as much as it guides you on it. With Garmin’s Vault storage plans, your optimal and best lap videos are automatically saved in the cloud and surfaced in the Catalyst app, which means your full library of sessions lives on your phone instead of on the device itself. That’s handy for drivers who bounce between tracks, coaching sessions and race weekends – you can pull up past laps, compare against friends, or send data to a human coach without carrying a tablet‑sized unit and a laptop everywhere. Leaderboards add a bit of social pressure too, letting you sort lap times by session, day, year, as well as by car make or model to see how your build stacks up against similar machinery.

Garmin is also widening the appeal beyond traditional road courses by folding in drag‑racing‑friendly features. A new drag racing timer can capture the staples that matter to straight‑line fans: 0–60mph sprints, plus 1/8‑mile and 1/4‑mile times. It’s a subtle but important nod to how broad the “performance driving” audience has become – not everyone is chasing tenths through esses; some just want to see if last week’s ECU tune and tire change actually made the car quicker down the strip.

All of this capability comes at a price that firmly positions Catalyst 2 as an enthusiast or semi‑pro tool rather than an impulse buy. The device will be available on Garmin’s website starting February 20, 2026, with a suggested retail price of $1,199.99 in the U.S. That’s a bump over what the original Catalyst typically sells for today, which often sits just under $1,000 at retailers as the first‑gen unit has matured in the market. For context, early reviews of the original Catalyst painted it as a product sitting in a sweet spot: more user‑friendly and approachable than full‑blown motorsport data systems, but significantly more powerful than a basic lap timer and action camera combo.

The big question, especially for existing Catalyst owners, is whether the second‑generation device moves the needle enough to justify an upgrade. Many of the foundational ideas – True Optimal Lap, real‑time voice coaching, automatic session analysis – debuted on the first unit, and reviewers praised how quickly you could get from “session done” to watching synced video with overlays and clear takeaways. Catalyst 2’s value proposition seems to hinge on doing all of that with more precision (thanks to the refined GNSS and sensor fusion), more convenience (with Vault storage and heavier reliance on the phone app), and a broader use case that now includes drag racing alongside circuit work. For drivers who live at the track several weekends a year, those incremental improvements can add up to less time fiddling with hardware and more time actually driving and improving.

Garmin, for its part, is clearly signaling that motorsport is not just a side project. The company already dominates categories like cycling head units, aviation instruments and outdoor wearables, and sees performance driving as another space where its data and sensor expertise can give it an edge. With Catalyst 2, it’s betting that amateur and club‑level drivers are ready for a future where every lap is recorded, analyzed and turned into a coaching moment – without needing a race engineer on the payroll. And if that bet pays off, the little 3‑inch box on your windshield might become as essential to a track day as a torque wrench and a spare set of pads.