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Pagani Design's PD-YS038 is a 10mm-thin integrated sports quartz, ten bar, A$239

Ten millimetres thick, 40mm across, sapphire and ten bar, and Pagani Design wants A$239 for it.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 2 min read · 14 August 2026

Pagani Design PD-YS038 with a black dial and orange minute markings on an integrated steel bracelet — Image: Pagani Design

Ten millimetres, front to back. That is the reason to stop on the PD-YS038, a 40mm integrated-bracelet sports watch that comes in thinner than most of the Swiss watches it is so obviously looking at. Pagani Design listed it on 13 August alongside two other new references, and it is the one of the three worth a look.

It gets there on quartz, and there is no coyness about that. The listing says quartz and leaves it there. What the trade buys is a case that slides under a cuff without a fight, which is the whole point of this style of watch and the bit the mechanical versions keep getting wrong.

Close-up of the blue sunburst PD-YS038 dial with its applied markers and 100M/330FT text — Image: Pagani Design

Ten bar, printed on the dial the old way

Water resistance is 10 bar, and the dial spells it out as 100M/330FT. The crown is push-pull, the crystal synthetic sapphire, the case 316L steel, with the flat faceted bezel and tapering bracelet this genre has been borrowing off itself for decades. None of that is a surprise, and none of it needs to be. It is the execution at the price that is doing the work.

The lume is the surprise. Pagani has published a fully charged shot and the markers and hands all come up evenly, no dead indices, no minute hand quietly giving up halfway through the night. Plenty of watches at ten times the money cannot manage that. The hour markers are applied rather than printed, and there is a light sunburst that reads differently across the blue and the green.

The PD-YS038 dial fully charged, with every marker and hand glowing evenly — Image: Pagani Design

The odd number is the weight

129 grams. That is more than the 43mm PD-1833 that launched on the same day at 110.2 grams, which looks wrong until you remember that steel bracelets are heavy and a bigger case does not automatically mean a heavier watch. The upshot is a 40mm quartz watch that sits on the wrist with a lot more heft than 40mm and a quartz module tend to suggest. Some people want exactly that. Some people spent years getting away from it.

Lug width is 20mm, so straps are easy if the bracelet is not for you. The bracelet itself measures 22cm.

The pink-dialled PD-YS038 on its steel bracelet — Image: Pagani Design

Blue, green, black, and a pink that commits

Four dials, all the same money. The blue is the one the photographs are in love with, a deep sunburst that goes nearly white where the light catches it. The green is quieter. The black, with its orange minute markings, is the closest thing here to a tool watch. The pink is a proper pink rather than a salmon hedging its bets, with a pink minute track running round the outside.

All four cost A$239 from Pagani's own store, or 143.95 euros in Europe. For that: 316L steel, sapphire, applied markers, lume that genuinely works, ten bar of water resistance, ten millimetres of case. It costs less than a decent strap from a Swiss brand. The quartz module and the finishing will not survive a loupe, and that is the trade at this price.