I'm guessing I'm the last person on Earth to learn that there's responsive code for Adlink units.
I got email from Adsense suggesting I implement it.

Having a responsive site, I had just been using a single Adlink size that wasn't too wide for mobile screens. On desktop I was just floating the unit to one side. All and all they looked kind of crapy so I was just using them in my footers.

Now with the responsive code, the units no matter what screen width are always full-width.
It seems they show three ads across on big screens, or three stacked ads on smaller ones.
They redesigned Adlinks a few months ago. Now they're always text inside an oval.
On mobile, and while not as refined looking, the Adlinks look a bit like Media.net's text units.

I guess I'm mentioning this because all and all they don't look all that bad, to the point I might consider using them higher up on my pages in-text.

Now that you can have more than three regular Adsense units on a page, possibly they still make the better choice. But if you're looking for a unit that's just different and possibly draws the eye for that reason, they could be a way of mixing things up.

A problem I am having is that when using multiple old-style Adlinks on a page, they tended to have more varied text links. The responsive ones tend to just show the exact same links as other units on the same page. Maybe that will change with time.