The NUC 8 Bean Canyon put Thunderbolt 3 on the front panel

Intel’s NUC 8 Bean Canyon front panel is a masterclass in useful I/O density. Two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, one USB-C with Thunderbolt 3, and a headphone jack — that’s everything you actually reach for on a daily basis.

The Thunderbolt 3 on the front is the interesting choice here. Most manufacturers hide Thunderbolt on the rear panel because it’s meant for docks and high-bandwidth peripherals. Intel put it right up front on the Bean Canyon, which makes plugging in an external NVMe enclosure or a portable GPU genuinely convenient. It’s a small design decision that tells you Intel understood how people actually use these things.