A new smart thermostat announced on Wednesday lets you adjust the temperature in your home by speaking to it.
The Ecobee4 thermostat has Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and microphones built into it, so you can tell it to make the room hotter or colder. But it does much more.
With the full range of Alexa skills, you can also ask the thermostat things like the weather outside and baseball scores while also controlling your smart lights. The device takes advantage of the more than 12,000 voice commands supported by Alexa.
The new voice-control functions help set it apart from Google's Nest smart thermostat, which doesn't offer any similar services. Google has the technology to enable that in future models, however. The company's Google Assistant works a lot like Amazon Alexa and currently powers Google's Android smartphones and Google Home, an Amazon Echo competitor.
The Ecobee4 is available for pre-order beginning Wednesday and launches on May 15, when customers will be able to find it at Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe's and on Amazon. It's priced at $249.