So, here’s my situation. I just finished RTK today. I live in Japan and my Japanese is okay except that my vocabulary isn’t very good. I can understand the sentences in Kanji in Context just fine as long as I know the vocab. I am signing up to take the JLPT2 in December and will need to learn way more vocabulary to pass.

From here on I would like to use Anki in my studies, and I want to decide in the next couple of days whether iKnow or Kanji in Context would be more fitting. My original plan was to do KIC but then I discovered iKnow. Since then I’m not sure what to do. I’ve been thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of KIC:

Advantages:
The example sentences are great.
The example sentences would also provide good practice with some grammar patterns.
It seems to better cover the vocabulary one would expect on the JLPT.
The difficult reflects that of the JLPT moreso than iKnow.
It’s a pretty and shiny book, and I already bought it a few months ago.
There’s a bunch of people working on typing it up at the moment, so I wouldn’t have to completely make the decks by myself.

Disadvantages:
No sound files.
The sentences can be quite long, and this might not be very good for SRS.
It would take longer to complete than iKnow.
I would still have to make the cards how I want them, even though they’re typed out already. The iKnow cards I wouldn’t really have to do much with.

I was wondering what everyone thinks about these advantages and disadvantages, and what they would tell someone who hasn’t really SRSed sentences yet. For example, I personally think that the sound files would be really helpful, and if I repeat them once it would be great for my pronunciation. Have other people found it helpful?

Also, I love the KIC sentences, but how bothersome have people found long sentences to be?
(Note: I also plan to SRS the Kanzen Master grammar book with whatever I choose)

I've used and nearly finished Reibun de Manabu Kanji to Kotoba (KIC's younger brother that focuses on JLPT2 kanji). I haven't really had a problem with the sentence lengths when SRSing. Shorter is good, but I used some long ones too and they're not too bothersome. Having said that I noticed KIC has a few examples that are realllly long (8 lines long).

You think KIC will take longer than iKnow; I am not sure that it would. If we look at the example sentences only (part III in the workbook) there are not that many sentences. The JLPT2 kanji make up about 80 chapters, which average around 15 sentences each (I just eyeballed this), so the total is roughly 1200 sentences. If you go with SmartFM / 2001KO lists, then there will be thousands more sentences to go through which will take more time.

This is partly because KIC sentences are more packed (at least twice as packed with kanji / compounds I would say) and partly because KIC doesn't give whole sentences for every compound. A lot of compounds in KIC are given in short phrases in workbook sections I and II. This can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

Sound files - yeah this is definitely a plus for Smart.FM, but it's also possible to do both KIC and listening cards with Smart.FM sentences if you want.

(By the way, I'm also going through KM2 grammar, especially after I finish RdM)

I was gonna buy KIC but ended up using smart.fm iknow etc rather than KIC. The good thing about iknow is obviously your own lists - ive been putting in all the kanji from 日本語総まとめ問題集 [2級漢字編] the orange book (I'm the only one on smart.fm using this crap book it seems) Ive put up to week 5 (thus far) and with my experience so far is quite good BUT you definitely need to use Anki with it which conveniently has a smart.fm import addon, or atleast do some things on paper. This may sound weird but its a font thing and how a kanji looks on screen as compared to paper. There was one time where i used smart.fm (before Heisig) and took a test and all the kanji i knew on the computer, I couldnt recognize small and on paper. With that aside, smart.fm is great for having sentences and sounds already on there, but many times sentences are wierd and sounds are wrong so just make sure as your inputing. All in all though smart.fm is pretty damn good, just change the theme, and the style of learning (kanji focus etc) so you get a different look and variety. Also not many people talk about BRAINSPEED part, but I use this alot for fast reviews when I get tired of smart.fm or Anki, its a damn good way to review loads of vocab superfast. Hmm...hope some of this helps