Well, the short answer to your question is: "The e-Series didn't exist." In fact, I just got some of the new boxes into the lab a few days ago, and I believe that these are some of the first review units available. Since SonicWALL had to get us test units for this test in July, the new 5500/6500/7500 boxes weren't even a rumor.

However, I don't see what cost has to do with it. We don't buy products by price ("Hey, Joe, order us $45,000 worth of server, would you? That should be enough for this application..."); we buy products by functionality. In all cases, we asked vendors for products with the same functionality: UTM for the enterprise with throughput in the gigabit range. Yes, some boxes were cheap and some were expensive, but that's something you can figure out yourself from the tables---and, unlike some magazines, we don't include price as a test criteria. It varies all over the place, and is subject to wild swings based on time of day, day of quarter, and phase of moon.

This is especially important in things like firewalls where each vendor has between 3 and 30 models, all running nearly identical software, but at different configurations and price points. So, if you didn't like the SSG-520 price, you could pick up a SSG-20 and have the same firewall, but cheaper, slower, and with fewer interfaces.

I don't see how much additional value we could give by trying to do a Juniper/Cisco/Check Point/SonicWALL test this close. However, we will be publishing a look at the SonicWALL E-class box that I've got in the lab as soon as we can get it into the cycle, and you should be able to see how it differs from the 5060 and draw your own conclusions.