This is arguable and pure aesthetic question.
Early return has been historically avoided in C and similar languages since it was possible to miss resource cleanup which is usually placed at the end of the function in case of early return.
Given that Java have exceptions and try, catch, finally, there’s no need to fear early returns.
Personaly, I agree with you, since I do early return often – that usually means less code and simpler code flow with less if/else nesting.