Generally speaking, digital audio players are portable and use headphones, although users often connect players to car and home stereos. Some DAPs also include FM radio tuners and/or microphones for voice recording. Many players can encode audio directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from a line in audio signal. Most have semi-permanent rechargeable batteries while others have conventional battery bays for disposable or rechargeable batteries.

Apple's iPod devices incorporate a proprietary dock connector that allows them to connect to accessories such as chargers, or active speakers with built-in charging, or even into car players. Accessories that use the dock connector are only compatible with iPods.

While early players tended to use flash memory, the development of tiny hard-disk drives of typically 10 to 40 Gbyte capacity made it possible to save entire music collections onto a digital audio player at reasonable cost. In 2006 the cost of external flash cards dropped sharply, largely because of the increasing popularity of the digital cameras, and this has made the use of external flash cards a more attractive option in music players. Such players allow different cards to be used for different groupings, such as classical or pop, with no limit to the size of the total collection. This concept also permits easy swapping of collections, but can lead to problems if the files are not saved in the same format. A few players, such as the SanDisk Sansa, will play files that have been dragged-and-dropped to the flash card on a personal computer, without the use of any special software, and will automatically cope with folders containing albums, displaying everything in terms of artist, track (song), or album. Others only play tracks, and get confused if these are placed in folders, and may even require special software to be used to format the card. As flash memory prices continue to drop, some commentators expect flash to take over from hard disk drives altogether. Currently, the microSD flash card, a tiny version of the Secure Digital (SD)card commonly found personal computer users, is being aimed at portable players and mobile phones, with a maximum capacity of around 4GByte. Micro-SD flash is readily converted into an SD size card (for use with a PC) by inserting it into an adapter shell. The use of external flash cards makes it possible in principle to move collections of music between personal players, portable players with speakers, home audio systems, and car players, though in practice car and home players that will handle MP3 files and folders properly, with tracks, albums and playlists selectable, are hard to find.

Flash digital audio players have even been incorporated into sunglasses, as demonstrated by the Oakley's "thump" model in 2004.

A number of manufacturers now produce Network MP3 players. These tend to be non-portable devices which have no storage of their own. Instead, they connect to a home Ethernet network, and receive a digital audio stream from some computer on the network. They are designed to connect to a home stereo, and are operated with a remote control. Slim Devices, Roku, and cd3o each produce a Network MP3 device.

Modular flash players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgraded (one can change the head or the body; i.e. to add more memory).

A new type of digital audio player has emerged as a result of satellite radio companies' push into popular markets in the North America (XM Radio [1] and Sirius). These devices [2] are linked to the paid subscriber's account in that the players record a certain number of programs, like a TiVo, and allows the user to listen to pre-recorded programs, often popular songs or talk shows, while on the run. This has caused the music industry to be concerned about the high-fidelity music becoming pirated secondary to the ease of recording. One such a recording device that conveniently records all the music, once hooked up a desktop computer, was successfully forced to stop being sold through the satellite radio companies' portals by the music industry.