It helps a lot more for kanji recognition. Also remember to pronounce the word in your head or say it softly. If you only type the pronunciation to the English meaning, you only remember the hiragana connected with the English meaning, but won’t actually remember what the kanji looks like since you aren’t testing yourself on the kanji.
(Feel free to type with keyboard for katakana loan words)
You should do this for similar languages like Chinese as well.