Comment by rinvi

This.

Handwriting is extremely important.

Anecdote: been learning Mandarin for almost a month now, I've been typing the pinyin of each character and my retention did not improve significantly. So, for the past week, I've been learning how to write it on my phone Chinese drawing keyboard and so far I've learned over 60 new characters all in the past 5-6 days with a surprisingly strong retention rate.