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Rating: - Battle stations!
Having already bought their (mostly excellent) Enterprise-D, I decided to go back and purchase Art Asylum's Enterprise-E. The company released these around 2006; the model itself looks like it did in Star Trek Nemesis and the sounds are mostly from that movie as well.

-AA created the mold for the ship from digital scans of the original, and it seems pretty accurate. While it's in scale with the D (actually, the D is in scale with IT, given the D came out in 2009), it still seems somewhat small. As mentioned by others, the paint scheme's contrast is off - I wish the plastic used for its overall construction was a light gray rather than off-white (though the ship does look white in parts of First Contact, the other colors blended better in that movie). It's not so much the white as the locations where it shows most, especially that ring around the saucer. I'm also not a fan of the "speckled" bluish gray scheme they used on the rest of the saucer, when they could have colored those sections a basic light gray (as is used on other parts of the ship). The tops of the nacelle pylons aren't painted but the bottoms are, which is strange. There are tons of molded-in windows around the ship but they're not painted in either. The plastic overall is somewhat thin, so light WILL bleed through during the sound effects, especially if you modify the model's bulbs (see below).

-The stand is in the shape of the rectangular Starfleet symbol used since season 3 of DS9 (and therefore in all 3 movies featuring the Enterprise-E). It ends in a small ball at its peak which plugs into a hole on the bottom of the ship. This was a much nicer design than the ball-plus-cylinder used for the Enterprise-D (and the TOS and movie enterprises released prior to the E). The ball design was also used for AA's NX-01 toy. It allows for better poses while maintaining a good grip, and I wonder why they didn't keep using the design. The extra battery cover without the hole (available on the other ships) is not included.

-The sounds are mostly from Nemesis, and are fantastic. They're loud and clear and distinct. As with other AA ships, you press the bridge dome to activate them one by one. Holding the dome down cycles through them, which is a cool feature since they work well together. On the Enterprise-D and TOS ships holding the button down turned on the lights by themselves, but here having the sounds and lights play in succession works in the toy's favor, as you get a complete set of battle sounds (including Captain Picard's commands). The lights don't just flash on when the sounds play, they're independent...for instance, during the "enemy attack" effect, you hear weapons hitting the ship and the lights go from bright to slowly flickering and dimming out, which is AWESOME.

-What's not awesome are the lights themselves. AA used tiny, weak bulbs to light the ship, and what's worse, the plasma coils (blue parts of the engines) are not lit. This is a huge oversight, as the box shows those sections lit and there's plenty of room for wires and bulbs there. I found message boards and videos online that showed ships with modified lighting, which is what I did to mine. Replacing the stock bulbs with LEDs, and adding extra ones for the plasma coils and the bridge impulse engines (which were originally lit by the same bulb that lights the bridge area) really makes the ship come alive!

Out of the box, the ship is somewhat small and disappointing. With some modifications to the lighting and paint (perhaps using a fine-tip pen to mark the windows) it will look a LOT better, though it's not easy and takes quite a bit of time and effort.

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