Quality link is always good but google is able to find reciprocal links and give them lower value. But it is still worth to exchange links IMHO.
Based on my experience, link exchange with quality relevant resources helps a lot in terms of improving SERP; but you need to make sure that you do not concentrate on this link building method solely
Reciprocal link does not carry as much as weight as having a one-way backlink. Anyway, there’s no harm in having it
For several years Google has been penalizing websites that engage in massive link exchanges by lowering their page rank or even by sandbagging the website altogether. What Google has been looking for and still is looking for are one-way links from other high PR websites that are in the same business category or in a closely related business category. Google's logic is that if a related category high PR website links a lessor PR website without exchanging links, there must be a good reason and the good reason must be that the linked website is a good website. This is false logic because high PR one-way back links can be bought and are in fact bought by the thousands but Google has no way of knowing that. Unfortunately this is the best Google can do and they haven't thought up anything better than that concept yet. To date, no search engine including Google has figured out a way to tell a really worthwhile website from a worthless website and that's why so many lousy and useless websites still come up in all the search rankings for any search term.