By wonky I mean, besides slow and spinning beach ball too often, it's started to get harder to wake up just the screen from sleep. It wanted to stay black. That's really motivating me.
I did the hardware test, extended, and all is well. I've done it twice within a few weeks and no difference.
I've got no idea what's up with that; I don't recall running across those symptoms before.
After you've got your new MBP up and running, we can hopefully get both your old MBP and your external running as expected, and with no data loss.