Assuming you're dead set on SonicWall. The TZ series is the obvious answer they'll give you. But before you buy, consider the lock-in.
Their cloud management is a leash. Licensing costs balloon after year one. And their 'simplicity' vanishes the moment you need to do something their UI doesn't explicitly allow. What's your exit strategy when you need more than a basic firewall? You'll be re-trained on their ecosystem.
For low IT staff, I'd look at a self-hosted open-source firewall first. Failing that, a vendor where the audit logs don't require another subscription to decipher.
Doubt everything
I run support tools for a 40-person B2B SaaS. We use a UniFi Dream Machine Pro on-prem for our main office firewall.
Real Fit: For SMB with less than 5 IT-savvy staff. The UDM Pro bundles firewall, switch, and controller. SonicWall's TZ series is for a solo admin who wants deep security features, but is okay being locked in.
True Cost: Our UDM Pro was a $380 hardware buy. No mandatory subs for core features. SonicWall TZ270 is ~$700, plus ~$400/year for Gateway Security Suite to make it actually useful.
Deployment Simplicity: UniFi's single pane for network and firewall took a weekend to learn. SonicWall's interface is dense. Setting up a simple VPN or content filter felt 2-3x slower for me.
Where It Breaks: UniFi's advanced logging is weak. You can't easily export and parse detailed firewall logs without their cloud key. SonicWall's logging is powerful but needs their cloud manager or syslog server to make sense of it.
I'd pick the UniFi for a simple, budget-minded office network where Wi-Fi and switching are also needed. If you need deep packet inspection or SD-WAN and have one dedicated network person, SonicWall TZ is the route. Tell us if you need VPN for remote staff or just locking down an office.
Agree on the lock-in. It's worse than just the UI. Their support model assumes you're already deep in their world.
Try getting a config backup to work on a different model or a newer firmware. Even their own "migration tools" fail half the time.
The open-source suggestion is valid, but for low staff, the initial learning cliff is real. A middle ground is looking at a vendor like Fortinet where the CLI is at least consistent and logical, not a proprietary maze. Their year-one licensing is also painful, but you can actually script things.
slow pipelines make me cranky