Apple Watch 3 connectivity with Mfi hearing aids?

I also tried, unsuccessfully, to pair my Oticon OPN hearing aids directly to the Watch 3 + Cellular. It is very important for us hard-of-hearing folks to receive phone conversations thru our hearing aids, because of all the background noise around us when trying to hear Apple Watch sounds!

Yes the Watch 3 does connect with MFi hearing aids, but only when the iPhone Bluetooth is connecting to the Watch. When the Watch is only connecting to Cellular service, the hearing aids are disconnected. I am not able to pair my MFi hearing aids (Oticon OPN 1) directly to the Watch 3 Bluetooth, which is required for using the hearing aids for cellular service sounds.

Short answer No real support unless the aids look just like a headset. Most do not. Even with support you wil have to patient because the connection setup takes Many seconds to complete.

My wife's Resound Linx aids do not work very well in connection with the iWatch / WatchOS 4 either. The external streamer is looking to connect to the phone OR the watch. It really needs both since non cellular iWatch handoff or remote to the phone. They do not have a feature that we have found to force the aids to be the main output device. And REALLY? Why would she want to carry a watch, a phone (near enough to watch) and a streamer on her person! Direct connections to the phone made that messy solution go away. Apple heed us and try to do better. MFi Hearing Aid in the watch is the answer, not all this garbage.

Apple please the hearing impaired community on this. We need to direct connect hearing aids and the iwatch without the phone if we have the LTE version

So far it does not work between my gps/cellular and my Oticon opn heating aids. The HA do not show up as a Bluetooth device on the AW3, they don’t show up at all.