SonicWall NSA series interface is way better than either Watchguard or Checkpoint. Even though people want to dismiss SonicWall NSA, they have the advanced features of its competitors, but with the easy interface. With all things being equal, I consider Palo Alto Networks to be …
This is a higher-end firewall, built for a medium to large business. It handles traffic and scanning and protection well but it would be a bit of a budget-buster and probably overkill for a small to (barely) medium sized business. SonicWall makes SoHo devices for those use cases and they would be more appropriate.
There is room for improvement when it comes to learning the UI, but the UI is overall pretty good. It doesn't take long to learn if you are famaliar with firewalls.
Most of the time, calling SonicWall NSA Support, you get an expert who can help resolve your issues. RMAs are pretty easy once they determine there is an issue with the hardware. Support is available 24x7, which makes emergency calls easy. The only downside is the support engineers may have thick accents; however, their expertise more than makes up for any language barriers.
We compared the FortiGate to Sonicwall and continued with Sonicwall as we were a mid-size school where the Sonicwall was performing adequately, and the learning curve was steep to switch platforms. The Sonicwall offered everything the FortiGate did, and was not as costly, both in the appliance and in licensing.