I questioned whether the iPod nano sound quality was closer to the iPod shuffle (excellent) or the regular iPods (not good). According to the PC Magazine review the sound quality of the iPod nano is more regular iPod than iPod shuffle.
On our formal tests, the iPod nano actually outperformed the 6GB iPod mini, with a slightly cleaner signal and better response in the lowest octave than its predecessor. Our square-wave test also showed that the output stage is significantly stronger than the mini's when loaded with Apple's stock earbuds but not as strong as that of the iPod shuffle, which has a different type of output.That is not good news since after listening to my iPod shuffle, there's really no going back to listening to my 4G iPod 40GB.