News · Peacock

Peacock curves the dial on the Black Hole III, and pushes its central tourbillon past US$5,000

A 43.5mm titanium case just 11.9mm tall, a hand-wound calibre with five days of reserve, and a price a third above where this collection started.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 25 August 2026

• Peacock has launched the Black Hole III, a third generation of its central tourbillon built around a curved guilloche dial in Condensed Cloud Blue or Midnight Purple.
• The Grade 5 titanium case measures 43.5mm across but stands only 11.9mm tall, and the hand-wound PAX9611A carries a 120 hour power reserve.
• The standard edition is US$5,099 and the Special Edition US$5,199, against the US$3,750 list price Peacock shows for the original Black Hole.

Two years ago the argument about Chinese tourbillons was still about whether they worked. That argument is over, quietly and without anybody conceding it out loud, and what has replaced it is a much more interesting question about what one ought to cost. Peacock has just given its own answer, and it is a good deal higher than the last one, in the shape of the Black Hole III Curved Guilloché Central Tourbillon.

The dial curves, and the tourbillon sits in the middle of it

The Black Hole has always been a one-joke watch in the best sense: the tourbillon sits dead centre, where the hands would normally be anchored, and the hours and minutes are pushed out to a ring around it so that the eye falls into the middle of the dial rather than reading across it. The third generation curves that dial, wrapping the guilloché down and away from the centre so the surface behaves like a shallow bowl catching light at different angles as your wrist moves.

Peacock calls the treatment curved guilloché, and in the brand's own close-ups the pattern tightens as the surface falls away rather than stretching flat, so the blue version, which it names Condensed Cloud Blue, moves between the colour of a gas flame and near-black depending on where you stand. There is a Midnight Purple as well, and it is the more restrained of the two, which is not a sentence you often write about a central tourbillon.

43.5mm, but only 11.9mm tall

The case is Grade 5 titanium at 43.5mm across, which is a lot of watch by any measure, and I am not going to pretend otherwise: this is a design that needs the diameter to give the tourbillon its stage, and it will overhang a slim wrist. What redeems it is the height. At 11.9mm a central tourbillon under a domed crystal is genuinely slim, and titanium keeps the mass down where a steel case this wide would sit like a coaster.

Water resistance is 5 ATM, which is the honest rating for a watch of this construction and means rain and a sink rather than a swim. An anti-reflective sapphire crystal covers the whole show, and the buckle is titanium to match, so the metal is consistent from lug to tail.

A 120-hour reserve out of a slow beat

The movement is Peacock's own PAX9611A, hand-wound, running at 21,600 vibrations an hour and carrying a 120-hour power reserve. Those two numbers work together: the slower beat asks less of the mainspring, which is part of how a hand-wound calibre driving a central tourbillon reaches five full days. In practice it means you can wind it on a Monday morning and it will still be running when you pick it back up the following Saturday, which is exactly the behaviour you want from a watch you rotate rather than wear daily.

The tourbillon is described by Peacock as coaxial and central, and it doubles as the small seconds, so the rotating cage is the seconds indication and there is no subdial anywhere on the watch. That is the neatest thing about the layout: the complication that usually has to justify itself is here doing a job the dial would otherwise need to find room for.

What has happened to the price

Here is the part worth sitting with. Peacock's own store lists the original Black Hole Central Tourbillon at US$3,750, now sold out in every dial, and the Event Horizon edition that followed it last year at US$3,999. The Black Hole III arrives at US$5,099, with a Special Edition at US$5,199 in two further dials called Canis Major and Perseus. That is a rise of roughly a third across two generations from the same maker.

I went into this expecting to be annoyed about that, and I am, a little. The curved guilloché is real work, and the Grade 5 titanium now runs all the way out to the buckle, where the Event Horizon closed on a stainless steel folding clasp. What has not moved is the watch around it: 43.5mm by 11.9mm is the Event Horizon's footprint exactly, and 120 hours has been the reserve since the first Black Hole in 2024. The extra money is buying a dial and a metal. What I am less sure about is the position it leaves the watch in, because at five thousand US dollars you are no longer comparing it to nothing. You are comparing it to a great deal of second-hand Swiss mechanics, and Peacock is asking to be judged on those terms. It has decided it is ready for that. The dial suggests it might be right.

The strap, and the choice it forces

Both versions come on a strap tapering from 23mm at the case to 18mm, in black fluororubber or white silicone, and the white is the one that appears in most of Peacock's own photography. It is the bolder call: white rubber against a dark curved dial reads as sports car rather than watchmaking, and if that is not your register then the black is right there. Nobody buying a central tourbillon is short of confidence, mind you.

Peacock Black Hole III pricing and availability

The Black Hole III Curved Guilloché Central Tourbillon is sold directly by Peacock, which ships internationally and quotes in US dollars to Australian buyers rather than in Australian dollars. The standard edition is US$5,099 in Condensed Cloud Blue or Midnight Purple, and the Special Edition is US$5,199 in Canis Major or Perseus, currently offered as a time-limited pre-order. Peacock has not published a piece count for either.