All of those images look more like heat pumps, which are actually ridiculously power efficient, especially if you're heating/cooling the rooms individually (since you're cooling only the hotspots, not the entire house to handle one hot room).

EDIT: The unit installed by the article's writer is an AC only, which is probably because the AC is cheaper than a heat pump. But a heat pump can both heat and cool, and are quite efficient.

The Google term of use is "Heat Pump Mini-Split"