Can you downgrade?

Hello everyone,

I bought an iPod touch 5th generation on Wednesday and it is installed with iOS 8. So far, iOS 8 on my iPod touch has been nice to use, however, I want to think ahead of time on what it may do to my iPod touch. I had the 4th generation before this, and it was terrible on iOS 6. It was extremely slow. iOS 8 would be the second update to the 5th generation, as iOS 6 was the second update to the 4th generation. My iPod touch runs smoothly now, but I feel it will be slow and useless within two years or so as my old iPod touch was. I've heard that iOS 8 tends to cause stutter on the 5th generation and the battery is not too great. If I use my iPod touch, it dies about nine hours later. At least my 4th generation lasted all day.

Is there any way to downgrade to, say, iOS 7? I'm scared my iPod is going to end up like my last one.

Thanks for reading.