 <p>Since your array is sorted, you can use <a href="http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Arrays.html#binarySearch(int[],%20int)" rel="nofollow">Arrays.binarySearch</a> which returns index of the element if it is present in the <code>array</code>, otherwise returns <code>-1</code>.</p> <pre><code>if(Arrays.binarySearch(numbers,j) != -1){ system.out.println("It is in the array."); } else { system.out.println("It is not in the array."); } </code></pre> <p>Just a faster way to search and you also don't need to convert your <code>array</code> to <code>list</code>.</p>