New to the 24MP sensor...surprised by hish ISO noise

Recently upgraded from X-T1 to X-H1 and have been surprised by high ISO noise above 1600 in raw. To my eyes it is worse than my X-T1. This shouldn't be the case according to reviews and the DPR comparison tool. For example, took some test shots of my kids playing outdoors in a wood. Needed ISO bumped up to 2500 to keep shutter speeds up. The grain on the skin tones was excessive and much more than I am used to seeing with the 16MB sensor in my X-T1 and X-E2. This is in raw. I looked in both LR and in C1 by the way. Can post examples when I'm back from the office. I can reduce this grain by turning off completely sharpening in LR. But even in C1 it's there, plus in C1 there seem to be more 'pitting' aretfacts in the skin tones.

Is it possible my camera is faulty and there is some kind of hardware fault that is leading to higher noise ? I have never heard of sample unit variation afefcting high ISO noise performance though? I have downloaded a few sample high ISO raws from different web sites and they don't seem as bad as mine, but I haven't found any that closely mimic the conditions I was shooting in and feature extensive skin tones.

What might be helpful is if someone can post a comparison from your X-H1 for me of a 100% crop from an LR conversion of an ISO 2500 shot with some skin tone in it, with the LR Luminance noise reduction left at zero, which is what it defaults to in LR.