Spring inject without autowire annotation

Yes, example is correct (starting from Spring 4.3 release). According to the documentation (this for ex), if a bean has single constructor, @Autowired annotation can be omitted.

But there are several nuances:

1. When single constructor is present and setter is marked with @Autowired annotation, than both constructor & setter injection will be performed one after another:

@Component
public class TwoInjectionStyles {
    private Foo foo;

    public TwoInjectionStyles(Foo f) {
        this.foo = f; //Called firstly
    }

    @Autowired
    public void setFoo(Foo f) { 
        this.foo = f; //Called secondly
    }
}

2. At the other hand, if there is no @Autowire at all (as in your example), than f object will be injected once via constructor, and setter can be used in it's common way without any injections.

From Spring 4.3 annotations are not required for constructor injection.

public class MovieRecommender {

    private CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao;

    private MovieCatalog movieCatalog;

    //@Autowired - no longer necessary
    public MovieRecommender(CustomerPreferenceDao customerPreferenceDao) {
        this.customerPreferenceDao = customerPreferenceDao;
    }

    @Autowired 
    public setMovieCatalog(MovieCatalog movieCatalog) {
        this.movieCatalog = movieCatalog;
    }
}

But you still need @Autowired for setter injection. I checked a moment ago with Spring Boot 1.5.7 (using Spring 4.3.11) and when I removed @Autowired then bean was not injected.