There will be many good options. This is what I happen to use usually and it works well for me. It would be useful to hear from other people too.
Irfanview does this well.
And its marvellous in general, and it's free.
I get scolded by Matt for enthusing over its slide show, resizing, basic organising and editing and more, so I won't :-). (It's OK to do this for Photoshop, I think.)
The amount of data in the EXIF block is astounding. To display it all at readable resolution would dominate the screen.
With Irfanview there are (at least) two methods. the options of customisable format or std screen on second monitor are both useful. I like the custom format as I can maximise readability (for me)(and you can for you) and know exactly where to look when scanning through photos at speed. Size and format can be varied to suit. The ugly block at screen top can be toggled on/off essentially instantaneously as required (keyboard being vastly superior to 'mouse' for such things as the brain can repetitively position and move fingers for N point selection far faster than it can semi-randomly move the hand/finger combination required for N point mouse selection).
(1) You can create an on-screen display of any subset of the EXIF data that you wish.
This can be located in one of 4 (I think) standard positions - I always use upper left - and can be sized to suit, a desired font and text colour can be selected and the text and background can be made opaque or semi opaque.
A challenge when using semi opaque text and/or background is finding a combination that is rapidly readable for all images. After much experimenting I've chosen to use an opaque background which makes for good readability at the cost of obscuring part of the image.
The text display can be toggled on/off with a single key press ("N") so it is easy to display it or not as desired.
Depending on task I may change the EXIF set and formating, but my normally used combination is as below. I save variations in a text file so that I can change them easily when desired. :
This is my standard setup:
Rather than explain the various EXIF codes used a picture of the result will be more informative. Spacing affects the result and the initial leading "." is part of the show (stopping leading space trimming on the first line.)
Which does this.
I realised only after labelling that I had screen captured this on a lower horizontal resolution screen than I usually use and the flash message has folded onto a new line.
In addition to the above:
EXIF view can be toggled on and off using "E"
and another subset with "I"
and full IPTC data fields access with another I.
(2). If using dual monitors the standard EXIF screen can be displayed on one while stepping through images on the other, thusly - the displayed EXIF data changes with each new image selected. This has the disadvantage of providing the first 27 or so EXIF fields of the programmers choice -which are useful but may not match what you want. he custom string method allows daata to be subset exactly as desired. The very ken may be able to modify Irfanview so that user selected EXIF data is provided on the standard screen. Irfan Skiljan accepts competent modifications that he likes so this may be a real option.
Dual screens. Photo on left, EXIF and other stuff on right.