I agree with Mike's answer but there's an implicit 3 second wait if no elements are found which can be switched on/off which is useful if you're performing this action a lot:
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(0, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
boolean exists = driver.findElements( By.id("...") ).size() != 0
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(3, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
Putting that into a utility method should improve performance if you're running a lot of tests