Woohoo, I’m officially up into Painful with @Aleithian.
No true cons apart from time input. It takes me way longer to write and necessitates screentime for myself. I’m a busy mom of two tiny ones (soon to be three). I try to avoid my screens when I’m around them… always have actual things to attend to like bills and crap, and a the end of the day I have so little time left to do things with. So basically that’s all. If I didn’t have the obligations and/or didn’t avoid being on my screen when with my kiddos, then I DO think I’d be writing as a chunk of my daily study as it is, as you said, really useful for getting feedback and corrections.
The only other thing I have to say on that front is that “you can’t expect to get out what you haven’t put in” to your brain. Hearing and reading the correct language patterns and grammar is invaluable in your ability to produce it. I’m a big proponent of italki and I think that language production/communication is what language learning is mostly all about, but writing WILL be easier the more you know. I think there’s a reason that writing ability is the last that we tend to as children. Listening first… then speaking… then reading… then writing. Almost always in that order.