(Background: I've got the NG AI versions of CCSA, CCSE, CCSE+, CCMSE, and I used Check Point products every day, and have done for most of the last 5 years).
Finally got around to sitting this one tonight, passed with 86%.
The comments above are pretty much accurate. I found most of it relatively straightforward, but there were a couple of very strangely worded questions, and some where I could see what answer they wanted me to give, but I believe all the answers were wrong. One or two of the questions about how to do a backup/restore/migrate to a new server were very strange - I wouldn't use any of the processes they suggested - there are better, easier ways. I'll email them about it later.
Study-wise, I used the sample chapters available, and the Check Point PDFs. The content is all in there, but when reading the Check Point docs, you need to know what sections to skim over, when they start going too deep into detail. Good to be able to reference it, but you're not going to get asked every possible cpha* command in the exam - only the main ones matter.
Regards whether it was harder than the previous exams or not, I'm not quite sure. I think it covers a few things that previously used to be CCSE+ level - e.g LDAP and ClusterXL. In itself that doesn't make it harder though - I found the CCSE+ the easiest exam of all the previous ones I've done. Perhaps on balance it was a little more difficult than the earlier versions. Some of the stuff like QoS I've never had questions on before. Luckily QoS was one of the sample chapters available, and the questions were not too difficult - 100% on that section, and I've never deployed QoS!
And just further to the comment about topics not being listed on the
website, this is the list of topics on my exam score report:
* Installing NGX and Upgrading
* QoS
* Enabling VoIP
* Monitoring Traffic and Connections
* Disaster Recovery
* Administrative Utilities
* HA and Clustering
* Configuring VPNs
* Configuring Remote Access
* Security Policy
* NGX Overview
* LDAP
cf with the list on the site, you'll notice a few differences. I'll mention that in my email too. The Certifications team is usually pretty good at responding.