We are currently evaluating a firewall refresh and are in the process of considering Palo Alto and Checkpoint. I saw that there have been threads on comparing the two in the past, but all the ones that I could find were several years old so I imagine that at least some of the differences or arguments one way or the other may have changed since then. I have a couple years of experience with PAN at a previous job whereas I've never worked with Checkpoint so that gives some advantage to going towards PAN whereas familiarity, but that hardly precludes Checkpoint from winning out on being a better value or simply impressing me in ways I'm not yet aware.

I know that PANW is a favorite for many these days despite being rather pricey, but it sounds like Checkpoint has stepped up their product line. What is the feedback on the two these days?