The stone, which reaches a maximum height of 1.39 metres, is wedge-shaped in plan and oriented north-west to south-east, with a notably smooth north-west face. Its south-west face has shed large layers over the years, and the southern angle of that face appears to have broken away through weathering. At the base of the north-west face sits a small lump of quartz, roughly 13 by 8 centimetres, one of several small stones clustered near the base. Quartz is found at prehistoric monuments across Ireland with some regularity, though whether its presence here is incidental or deliberate is impossible to say.

What gives the site an extra layer of interest is a note recorded by Liam Price in 1951, cited in Corlett and Weaver's 2002 study, which states that the ogham stone now at Donard "is said to have been just near this pillar stone." Ogham is an early medieval script, typically carved as a series of notches and lines along the edge of a stone, and the Donard example is a named monument in its own right. If the tradition recorded by Price is accurate, the Ballylion stone once stood in the company of an inscribed monument, which would make its isolation feel more like a loss than a natural condition. The view from the ridge spur is expansive: Church Mountain, which carries a cairn on its summit, dominates the horizon to the north-north-east, and Spinans Hill is visible to the south. Across the river valley to the south-west, a flat-topped hill has been substantially quarried away, altering a landscape the stone has overlooked for an unknown stretch of time.