The crashes I experienced happened after successful migration of my data from time machine backup of my mbp 2016. I was able to reboot, work, restart system with no issues. The crashes started happening after I walked away and it went to sleep. It crashed and I had to reboot or froze requiring hard reset. Thought it was an anomaly until the pattern repeated itself 3 more times within 48 hours.
The crash I was experiencing was actually pretty well documented on these forums. Kernel panic crashes when the macbook is connected to external monitor(s) when it goes to sleep. Lots of others on
these forums and
apple support forums reporting this.
I just didn't want to spend too much time trying to fix this while my return window slipped away. I sent it back after 4 crashes (some minor data corruption from this)