When the Ent-E first came out, I loved it. I absolutely hated the Galaxy class and I thought the E was a massive improvement. Oddly, as I've grown older (I was 16 when FC came out), I've grown to appreciate the Ent-D and have slowly started to hate the E.
And because it's come up so often, I agree that the Constitution refit from TMP is the absolute best looking ship in all of Star Trek. It's just perfection, in my eyes; I never get tired of it.
My feelings are very similar to this although I would say that when the E-E was first shown in publicity photos at the age of 12 I hated it in comparison to the 3 Enterprise's I had grown up watching weekly on BBC2 (either reruns of TOS or first run of TNG) and my movie collection. I did however fall in love with her on first sight sailing through that nebula.
In some ways I do say my favourite ship to bear the name Enterprise is the E when I am in that particular mood (love First Contact) however when I really think about it my top 3 Enterprises will be the ones I grew up with watching so often; Be it the classic lines of the TOS, the gorgeous updated styling of the refit (love rewatching the 'tour' in TMP and her sailing out of Space dock in TVH) and the grand Enterprise-D from 7 years of TV.
I think they could have given her a larger refit if she had survived Generations to fix set concerns they had by largely replacing them, that said I have always loved how they lit the Bridge in that movie.
The loss of the Enterprise D I felt as much as the original, though being younger I think I managed to avoid knowing the ship would be destroyed in TSFS until I watched it for the first time (rare back then and likely impossible to not know if watching now even as a youngster) while there were numerous behind the scenes features showing how they filmed the saucer crash.
I kind of wonder how she would have looked internally knowing how they designed Voyagers sets which in many aspects looked much more real than TNG's being so much newer.
The Enterprise-E has certainly set the pattern for how ST:Online and post Prime timeline ships are shown. At one point I liked the E better than the D, but I changed my mind after some time because of the classic artistry of the E-D shape winning me over.
The Enterprise E harkens back to the classic Constitution Class lines but has so many more shapes and surface details, some angles she is downright gorgeous and others she falls down, most if not all of the Star Trek ships have less flattering angles than others.
The Enterprise D had its own design flow which carried over from both versions of the Enterprise C but neither flow from the Nil > A > B, I put it down to a change in design aesthetic from the design staff in universe. What I do like though is the evolution from the C to the D to Voyager and can also be found in some of the latter ones like the Steamrunner and even Equinox (though I think she blends the E-D/Voyager with elements of the E-E well).
My favorite Enterprises from the Prime line in order:
1, Enterprise-C
2. Enterprise-D
3. Enterprise-E
4. Enterprise refit/A
5. Enterprise-J
6. Enterprise-TOS
7. Enterprise-NX-01
8. Enterprise-B
The list isn't a condemnation of any model, they're all well designed "hero" ships.
RAMA
My list changes frequently but as of right now it would probably be
- Refit/Enterprise-A
- Enterprise-D
- Enterprise-TOS
- Enterprise-E
- Enterprise NX-01
- Enterprise-C
- Enterprise-B
I don't count the J in lists as who knows what changes defeating the Sphere Builders had in terms of ship designs, I could pop my opinion on where the JJ ship features in my run down but I am only considering Prime Trek here.
