A simple new binary test for chaos has been proposed by Gottwald and Melbourne. We apply this test successfully to the Henon-Heiles and Lorenz systems, demonstrating its applicability to conservative systems, as well as dissipative systems. The binary test is effective for highly chaotic Hamiltonian systems and orbits on a strange attractor and is particularly useful as a marker of the transition from regularity to chaos. However, we find it is not able to detect more subtle instances of transient chaos.