Hangul (Korean) has the uniform, blocky look of Chinese characters, while also being a phonetic alphabet like English. Every hangul block is composed of two or more alphabets from a set of 24, so if you know those 24, you can read any of the 11K+ possible combinations. It's similar to the concept of "radicals" in Chinese, but much simpler and with fewer irregularities.

So the reading advantage, if any, is not necessarily incompatible with using a phonetic alphabet with a small number of symbols.

The lack of precision (or higher ambiguity) might also be seen as a disadvantage in the highly technical world of today, although I very much appreciate it in literary and philosophical works.