Amazon's Echo was one of the stars of the retail giant's record-breaking holiday period, and it was only a matter of time before competitors started making their own smart speakers. LG's new SmartThinQ hub appears to be one such copycat. The hub, announced today ahead of a demonstration at CES next week, is visually similar to Amazon's Echo, and like that device, features a large built-in speaker that can stream music. But where the Echo is only gradually moving from cool curio to useful gadget, LG is pitching the SmartThinQ as the "gateway" to your automated home, connecting to smart refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners, and displaying their information on a 3.5-inch color LCD display.

Notifications and controls are managed via a dedicated SmarThinQ app, meaning you'll need to manually select options to turn your air conditioner up, increase your thermostat temperature, or skip a song, instead of simply yelling for your speaker to do it for you. But while it may not be as easy to use, by connecting with LG's other SmartThinQ products — including the SmartThinQ sensor the Korean company announced earlier this year that can make regular appliances "smart-aware" — the new hub potentially offers more options for actually managing your home than Amazon's little experiment.