Advantages of Java NIO in blocking mode versus traditional I/O?

I have pretty much already decided not to use asynchronous, non-blocking Java NIO. The complexity versus benefit is very questionable in general, and I think it's not worth it in this project particularly.

But most of what I read about NIO, and comparisons with older java.io.* focuses on non-blocking, asynchronous NIO versus thread-per-connection synchronous I/O using java.io.*. However, NIO can be used in synchronous, blocking, thread-per-connection mode, which is rarely discussed it seems.

Here's the question: Is there any performance advantage of synchronous, blocking NIO versus traditional synchronous, blocking I/O (java.io.*)? Both would be thread-per-connection. How does the complexity compare?

Note that this is a general question, but at the moment I am primarily concerned with TCP socket communication.