The Sony NWZ-A816 is a MP3 player with video capabilities that also allows for photo viewing using a 2-inch LCD screen with QVGA quality. It is quite compact but with a memory of 4GB that can handle a maximum of 2300 songs, around 15 hours video and hundreds of photos. It is also found compatible with the Windows Media Audio. It comes with MDR-EX082 headphones.

The NWZ A816 has a rechargeable built in battery made of lithium that allows a maximum of 35 hours audio and 6 hours video playback time. It supports MP3 and WMA DRM, non-DRM and non-DRM AAC content as well as MPEG4 file format and JPEG photos. It boasts of clear Audio Technologies, a Time Machine Shuffle, and a Music and Initial Search Engine to search for a particular song using the name of the album, artist, playlist or song. It uses a USB port for file transfers.