Portable A/C units advice

[TherealMeghanMarkle]

Anyone any experience of using portable a/c.
Recently move to Australia where it regularly is in high 30s in the summer and low 20's in the winter.
House hunting but the property's I like (the older Victorian style) or can afford don't have A/C. Mixed online reviews from they are great to don't waste your money. Happy to spend the money if it works but wanted advice from anyone who actually uses them.
Am I crazy even thinking about a house with no a/c? -I think I am

I use them for a couple of months in the summer in Massachusetts where it is in the 30's and very humid- temperature doesn't drop at night.

We rent but if we were to buy a house then I would definitely want centralized ac. They work but as soon as you turn them off the temperature and humidity rises pretty quickly. Plus you need one for every room or need to keep doors closed for whichever room the box is in.

We are in Sydney and don’t have aircon, we are in a weatherboard house with good ventilation and we use a mixture of ceiling and stand fans. Occasionally we think about a portable one but have never got round to it. If you are in Perth with more sustained heatwaves though it might be different, if I ever did it I would probably choose to instal a proper unit in one room - the portable ones are pretty ugly.

I have had both central air and window units. Never portable (do you mean those free standing units which exhaust via a tube out a window? Or window units?).

My central air was crap, though this may have been a function of a wooden construction house, built 1905, with zero wall insulation. The fan never pushed enough cold air upstairs to make the bedrooms comfortable.

Window units where I live now are pretty good, even though the sitting room/dining room is open plan. Previously when I lived in apartments I didn't have enough units and south facing windows meant heat blasted in.

You would really need one in each bedroom, and ceiling fans help move the cooled air around. One in the kitchen helps too. My current kitchen doesn't have one and I use the Instant Pot a lot in summer.

I'm in the midwest US and we get very hot and humid spells of up to a fortnight here in summer. Temps don't go down at night even when it's down in the 80s.

If your climate is humid you will need AC. Window units should work though.