Yeah, I read words all day and don't think my reading would be significantly improved if I started communicating in Chinese and read kanji. I'm sure one language is easier to read than the other but I doubt it is because their symbols are distinct per "word". I suspect that English readers don't read every individual character but rely a lot on word shape and I also suspect that people reading kanji do take some effort parsing particular features of the characters. I doubt there is a major fundamental difference.